IRELAND - Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) is changing its management structure in the wake of last week’s departure of head of lending Graham Emmett.

In future, the lending and corporate finance teams will be part of the portfolio management team, and they will report to deputy head of portfolio management Michael Moriarty, spokesman for the agency Ray Gordon confirmed.

Gordon told IPE: “Graham Emmett finished last Friday - this was by mutual agreement, and he is returning to the UK.”

The agency is part of the National Treasury Management Association (NTMA) and was set up in 2009 to deal with the Irish banking crisis, buying loans linked to land and development.

Separately, NAMA’s head of treasury Frank O’Connor is being promoted to deputy director in the debt management team at the NTMA, reporting to Oliver Whelan, director in charge of debt management.

Last month, the NAMA published a review of the agency by Michael Geoghegan, the former group chief executive at HSBC Holdings.

The review had been commissioned by the board of NAMA, and was supported by Ireland’s minister of finance Michael Noonan.

In the review, Geoghegan stressed that the agency should evolve further to become the “pro-active, externally focused, entrepreneurial, confident business it needs to be”.

The “control” features the agency had at the moment needed to be balanced with those of entrepreneurial skills, and this was something the government minister should consider in future appointments to the board, the review said.

It needed to make sure it had the right balance between oversight and management, with the latter being the responsibility of the executive, he said.

The review also recommended the restructuring of the portfolio management, credit and risk, lending and legal departments.

Gordon said the NAMA had no further changes to announce at this stage.

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