Investec announces disposal of Irish mortgage unit

15th Sep 2014 11:11

South Africa-based broker Investec has reached an agreement to sell its Irish intermediated mortgage business Start Mortgage Holdings, alongside other Irish mortgage assets to an affiliate of Lone Star Funds.The transaction is a part of Investec’s strategic drive to simplify and reshape its specialist banking business, and marks a further reduction in its legacy non-core business.For the fiscal year ending on 31 March 2014 the firm saw a loss before taxes of £21m and had gross assets of £540m.The transaction is expected to add 2p per share to adjusted earnings for a total of 40p, but remains subject to regulatory approval.Net asset value per share will decrease to 299.1p from 308.7p beforehand.Following the above operation, together with the recent disposal of Kensington Group and Investec Bank Australia, the common equity Tier 1 ratio of Investec is expected to rise to 11.1% from 8.8% and its leverage ratio from 7.4% to about 8.9%.As of 11:07 shares of Investec were slippung 1.08% to 552p.