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The last rites were effectively read early on
Thursday morning for Anglo Irish Bank - - the damned builders' bank - - when the
Oireachtas voted for its liquidation. However, the dénouement of the defunct
bank that had been rebranded as the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) in
recent years, will extend for several decades when the resultant public debt of
over €30bn will be repaid. The bank will remain a potent symbol of monumental
misgovernance, catastrophic regulatory failures, a failed political system where
the buck stopped nowhere, an electorate with a significant number tolerant of
the corrupt machine politics model of Tammany Hall that had been imported from
Irish America, a self-interested elite, the surrender to powerful vested
interest groups, a passive academic community, a media including RTÉ, the State
broadcaster, intoxicated by the windfalls from the bubble advertising boom and
the missed best opportunity since the foundation of the State in 1922, that was
available in the 1990s to build a sustainable economy for the long term.
However, the windfalls from the property bubble went
into more property and the Irish became the second biggest national group for
commercial property investment across Europe.
Michael Noonan, finance minister, told the Dáil
that the leaking of a plan to liquidate IBRC as part of a promissory note debt
deal with the European Central Bank, forced the Government to legislate for its
winding up.
In
his speech [pdf] Noonan said that as soon as the information relating to the
proposal to liquidate IBRC was made public, there was an immediate risk to the
bank. "Given this position, I as minister for finance, took immediate
action to secure the stability of the bank and the value of its assets,
valued at €12bn, on behalf of the State. To this end, I vested the powers of the
board temporarily in an employee of KPMG (a Big 4 accounting firm) and a KPMG
team is now in control of the bank on my behalf."
The
Irish Bank Resolution Corporation Bill 2013 [pdf] provides that the net debt
owed by IBRC to the Central Bank and its associated floating charge security
will be transferred to NAMA, the State's toxic property loans agency, using NAMA
bonds, to ensure that there is no capital loss for the Central Bank.
Noonan said the liquidator had already taken over
and secured IBRC premises in Ireland, London and New York.
All eligible deposits up to €100,000 for an
individual and €200,000 for two individuals holding a joint account in IBRC are
covered by the Deposit Guarantee Scheme in operation in the State and eligible
deposits beyond this limit are guaranteed under the Eligible Liabilities
Guarantee Scheme. Most of IBRC's deposit accounts were moved to AIB and
Permanent TSB last year and they are unaffected by the liquidation.
Noonan said that it was critically important that
deposit account holders, mortgage account holders, and those indebted to IBRC
understand that their situation following the liquidation should generally
remained unchanged.
The Bill was passed in the Dáil by 113 votes to
35 and referred to the Seánad. President Michael D. Higgins cut short a visit to
Rome and returned home to Dublin on Wednesday night to be available to sign the
legislation into law.
Bloomberg
reported Thursday morning that European Central Bank policy makers sought
more time to weigh a proposal presented by Ireland today to restructure the cost
of bailing out Anglo.
A decision is unlikely within the next 24 hours
as some members of the ECB’s governing council want to discuss the blueprint
with their own central banks first, according to a person familiar with the
situation, who asked not to be identified, as the matter is private.
Reuters on Wednesday reported that IBRC's
liquidation was necessary so that the Irish government no longer had to make
€3.1bn of annual payments on the promissory notes stretching out until 2023. The
next payment was due next month.
Last month, in a proposal for restructuring €28bn
worth of promissory notes, Patrick Honohan, Irish Central Bank governor,
proposed to the ECB governing council that the Irish unit would hold a long-term bond for a
minimum of 15 years. The council however viewed the proposal as "monetary
financing", which is prohibited by EU treaty.
Shane Ross TD, a cheerleader of the two
leading bankers of the crisis, said in Dáil Thursday morning, that the situation
was a "humiliation" for the Government and the country and it was "close to a
fiasco".
The Sunday Business Post reported in 2011
(now behind a paywall) that ["Ross wrote articles in the Sunday Independent on
April 27, 2003, March 28, 2004 and December 19, 2004 that singled out former
Irish Nationwide and Anglo Irish Bank chiefs Michael Fingleton and Seán
FitzPatrick for praise.
In his piece ‘Fingers
sidelines a sorry Soden’, Ross outlined Fingleton’s ‘‘cracking set of
figures. Michael Soden’s Bank of Ireland bored us all to tears with another
trading statement’’.
The article goes on to compare the results. ‘‘The building society is on the
verge of sale. The figures were sparkling. Members with adequate savings or
mortgages are in for a €7,000-plus bonanza.
‘‘Fingleton’s return on total average assets at 2.03% was far superior to
Soden’s at 1.22%,” Ross wrote.
‘‘He even leaves superstar Seán FitzPatrick’s Anglo Irish standing, with only
1.54%. All Fingleton’s figures are spectacular.”
Ross praised Fingleton after a meeting of a rebel group of shareholders in 2003.
‘‘Fingleton’s stewardship can be criticised.
Sure, he needs more heavyweights on the board.
Sure, he has been overzealous in his pursuit of defaulters. Sure, he earns an
awful lot of money (€835,000).
Sure, he has been less than transparent. But Fingleton, for all his faults, has
delivered the only thing that matters in business: profit.”]
In February 2012, Minister Joan Burton
reminded Ross of his past admiration for the longtime chief of Anglo Irish
Bank.
"I recall his commentary on many occasions,
particularly coming up to Christmas and the New Year, on luminaries of the Irish
collapse. I believe Mr Seán FitzPatrick was always his nominee to be governor of
the Central Bank or minister for finance."
From Anglo Irish Bank's Annual Report 2006
Anglo's rise and IBRC staff numbers
We
operate to the highest ethical and governance standards as we aspire to be a
model corporate citizen. For this reason we invest heavily in the development
and training of our staff, as well as maintaining the highest levels of
integrity in our relationships with our stakeholders- -Anglo Irish Bank Annual Report 2007
Anglo Irish Bank was founded in 1964 as Dublin City Bank and became a publicly
quoted company in 1971. It had 1,900 employees in December 2007.
In 1986 Seán FitzPatrick, a chartered accountant, became chief executive; Dublin
City Bank merged with Anglo Irish Bank Ltd and assumed the latter's name.
December 2008/January 2009 - - Seán FitzPatrick, chairman, David
Drumm, chief executive, and a number of board members resigned after it emerged that FitzPatrick
had taken measures over an eight-year period, to conceal details from
shareholders, of up to €122m in loans he took from the bank.
Seán FitzPatrick transformed
Anglo Irish Bank into Europe's most successful bank in results terms, as it
recklessly lent with the tacit support of the Irish Government during the
property bubble.
The Government announced the nationalisation of
the bank in January 2009 and said it had received assurances from the Financial
Regulator and Central Bank that the company was solvent.
The State was due to take control of 75% of the bank after announcing a plan in
December to provide €1.5bn in public funds.
The Department of Finance said in a statement: "Anglo Irish Bank is a
major financial institution whose viability is of systemic importance to
Ireland. Anglo has a balance sheet of some €100bn with a substantial deposit
base which the State is determined to safeguard. The Government has made clear
that it will ensure its continued viability. Anglo Irish Bank will continue to
trade normally as a going concern, with appropriate Government support as
necessary. All Anglo employees remain employed by the company."
Anglo Irish Bank closed at 22 euro cent on the Irish Stock Exchange,
on its last day of trading before becoming a State-owned bank.
On February 21, 2007, the ISEQ index rose to an-all time high of
10,041 and the Financial sub-index rose to 18,098. Bank of Ireland
closed at €18.65; Anglo Irish closed at €16.64 and AIB closed
unchanged at €23.95.
A year later, on February 21, 2008, AIB closed at €13.80, Anglo
Irish Bank finished at €8.84, while Irish Life & Permanent closed at
€10.20 and Bank of Ireland traded at €9.50.
A small number of issues dominate the Irish market and during the bubble, overseas
residents, dominated by hedge funds and institutions, owned more than 60% of
Irish bank shares. Ireland's biggest company CRH, accounts for 22% of Irish market capitalisation and about 90% of the issued shares are held overseas.
Mike Aynsley, a retired Australian banker,
became chief executive in September 2009 and wanted to maintain a 'good' bank as
a going concern but the
European Commission blocked his plans.
It's extraordinary that the bank has been closed for
business but has about 800 staff with 7 senior executives worth with pay packages worth more
than €500,000 - - where the entity's main function is debt collection.
Figures issued to Fianna Fáil TD Michael McGrath in
response to a Dáil question last November showed that there were 12 staff at
IBRC in receipt of remuneration packages of €300,000-€399,000, 24 on
€200,000-€299,000 and 44 on €150,000- €199,000. The packages include salaries,
pensions benefits and allowances. Some 146 IBRC staff earn €100,000-€149,000,
while 774 earn less than €100,000.
In April 2012, Alan Dukes, chairman of the
State-owned entity and a former minister for finance rejected a request from the
current minister to reduce salaries, saying that it had difficulty retaining and
attracting staff, and that the packages paid to senior management were lower
than those historically paid by the former Anglo.
The Financial Times in an editorial, 'Dublin's shame', said: "Ireland’s
bankers have not covered themselves in glory in recent years. The credit binge
they presided over felled the country’s largest lenders and saddled taxpayers
with a €64bn debt.
As the Irish people have been paying heavily for this ever since, in the form of
fierce austerity and plummeting real wages, one can understand why pressure has
risen for those who presided over the mess to share a little of the pain. This
week, Allied Irish Banks, one of Ireland’s nationalised banks, duly wrote to
more than 15 of its former directors asking them voluntarily to forgo part of
their pensions.
It is debatable whether the generous savings those bank executives built up
during the fat years were truly earned, given the cataclysm that followed. But
what is unarguable is the fact that after the rescue the Irish government had to
slash spending on both its current and future pensions. Those who helped to dock
the retirement income of others can hardly complain if they are themselves asked
to take a hit."
The Guarantee
The subprime story in the
US broke in February 2007 and the music stopped on international credit
markets in early August 2007. Irish developers with huge loans stopped servicing
their debts as politicians sang a 'soft landing' mantra.
“Liquidity, not capital, is the main issue in the current crisis,” the
financial regulator wrote to Kevin Cardiff, head of banking at the Department of
Finance in early September 2008. A week later, days after the Lehman investment
bank crash, Anglo executives were in Merrion Street with assurances: despite the
cash crunch, the outlook was healthy: “Loan book remains strong,” they
said.
In the US, there was a full-scale panic with Treasury yields falling to World
War 2 levels; two giant financial institutions AIG, and Citigroup, had to be
bailed-out by the federal government. Yet, bizarrely the ’soft landing’ was
still the narrative in Dublin.
Anglo had more than €50bn in deposits and
€10bn in senior bond debt.
US Investment bank Merrill Lynch produced a document
setting out various scenarios and in respect of Anglo, said only 3% of its loans
valued at €72bn were impaired, according to the banks' management. It said Anglo
needed to raise funding of €4.9bn by Oct 24th.
Early on September 29, 2008, a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) partner emailed
Kevin Cardiff saying Anglo “borrowed €0.9bn from the Central Bank and do not
have any reserves left.”
It was one day to the bank's year end and it was
seeking a loan of more than €4bn from Irish Life & Permanent, which would be
treated as a deposit in the year end accounts. However, IL&P needed a Central
Bank guarantee to cover the loan.
Speaking points were produced for the taoiseach on
September 30, 2008, the first day of the State guarantee.
The asset quality in the financial institutions, the document said, was good
with a strong concentration in residential mortgages with a relatively low
loan-to-value ratio. It said there is a "very significant capacity within the
institutions to absorb and losses."
“There is therefore, a significant buffer before there is any question of
credit impairments on the Exchequer on foot of the guarantee,” the note
said.
Neary told the Taoiseach, days before the guarantee was issued "there is no
evidence to suggest Anglo is insolvent on a going concern basis - it is simply
unable to continue on the current basis from a liquidity point of view."
An extraordinary aspect of the fateful guarantee meeting of September 29th/30th,
2008, was that the chairmen and chief executives of AIB and Bank of Ireland were
in Government Buildings for several hours and Macbeth's Banquo's ghost, representing the
absent Anglo Irish Bank chairman Seán FitzPatrick was also surely there. On
the Monday afternoon, September 29th, FitzPatrick and David Drumm, the chief
executive, had gone to arch rival Bank of Ireland to propose a merger.
We do not know why FitzPatrick was told to stay away from the guarantee meeting
but there must have been constant phone interaction with him. We also do not
know what the respective roles of Taoiseach Brian Cowen and the late Brian
Lenihan, finance minister, were on the type of guarantee that should be issued. Which of them was
the main advocate?
There was no contact with European officials on the Monday evening from
Government Buildings as it was likely
anticipated that support for a blanket guarantee, covering both deposits and
debt, would not have been forthcoming.
Providing a
lifeline to Anglo was the dominant consideration and the political leaders may
still have foolishly believed that it was a liquidity problem rather than a
solvency one.However, thirteen months after the onset of the international
credit crunch and with the collapse of Lehman Brothers causing ripples across
the global economy, there should have been no illusory glimmer of a light at the
end of the tunnel for the property market. It does appear that even though the
Department of Finance had prepared a draft bill to nationalise Anglo, Fianna Fáil’s leaders just could not accept or take account of the implications of a
collapse of the bank that was so synonymous with the Galway Races tent elite.
They knew that interest wasn’t even being paid on huge loans by most of the high
profile developers. Nevertheless, all debt was guaranteed without apparent
consideration of the downside risks. The “cheapest bailout in the world so far”
on September 30th, 2008 had by January 16th, 2009 become the biggest bank
taxpayer burden in the world, when it was finally decided to nationalise Anglo.
The guarantee took away the pressure for a quick resolution of the banking
crisis and as the second anniversary of the issue of the guarantee drew near,
the markets lost confidence and the ECB worried about the increasing reliance of
Irish banks on its emergency funding mechanism. The ECB vetoed “haircuts” or
discounts on senior bank debt during the negotiations of the EU-IMF bailout in November 2010 because of fears of spreading instability to other countries. Coupled
with the sense of victimhood exploited by opposition politicians in the February
2011
general election and the perceived harsh treatment from countries like Germany
and France, there has been a rising clamour for debt default.
In May 2007, Bank of Ireland chief economist Dr Dan McLaughlin told a conference
of housebuilders: “In Ireland there has been a spate of forecasts projecting a
slowdown in growth, but in truth most of the current macro-indicators,
(including retail sales, industrial production, foreign travel and unemployment)
do not suggest any softening in the pace of growth. Consequently, I still expect
6% growth in 2007, easing to 5% in 2008.” McLaughlin added: “Indeed, there are a
number of economic viewpoints about the Irish economy which are often voiced but
have little in the way of support from the facts. One often hears that growth is
unbalanced but a glance at the data from 2001 to 2006 shows average GDP growth
of 5.3%, with all components growing in a 4.5%-5.5% range. Others complain that
too many resources are being devoted to consumption but consumer spending in
Ireland amounts to 46% of GDP which is not only below the eurozone norm (55%)
but has fallen steadily for the past forty years. Household savings in Ireland
is also relatively high (at around 10% of household disposable income), which is
similar to Germany and substantially above the UK (5%) and the US (zero). This
also means that many people benefit from a rising rate environment but this view
is also rarely heard.”
So, “ ... little in the way of support from the facts”? Academic economists left
the public arena to the bank economists and McLaughlin appeared in the broadcast
media without fear of challenge from journalists or other economists. The facts
he ignored showed that the economy was absolutely unbalanced: annual credit
growth was at 30%; reckless bank lending was fuelled by foreign loans:
bank debt to foreign banks had been 10% of GDP (gross domestic product)
in 2003 and was heading for over 60% in 2007; there was no jobs growth
in the exporting sector, while over 400,000 new jobs were created in
construction, the public sector, retail and distribution; Ireland in 2007 ‑ a
small country reliant on foreign firms for 90% of its tradeable exports
‑ had the most expensive housing in the developed world, with floor areas per
person a fifth less than the Western European average.
In 2006,
Finfacts contacted the Central Bank of Ireland seeking data on interest-only
loans.
We naively
expected that the bank would have collected such pertinent data from the lending
institutions as part of its normal data collecting function on credit activity.
The bank did not have any data on interest-only loans even though beyond the
sheltered workshop on Dublin's Dame Street, anyone with a clue of the buy-to-let
market in particular, knew that the standard financing was a 5-year
or 10-year interest-only loan. For big values, it was generally sufficient for an
accountant to supply a statement of new worth.
2006: Interest-only loans aiding international property boom - -
"In
recent years, more
than 75% of Bank of Ireland investment customers have availed of the
bank's ten-year interest-only mortgage, according to Bank of Ireland Mortgages
Manager Olive Moran."
One of the most striking illustrations of the
dysfunctional nature of the office of the Financial Regulator, was that for most
of 2008, the chief executive Patrick Neary was unaware of the discovery by his
staff, that Irish
Nationwide provided loans of up to €122m to Anglo
Irish Bank's Seán Fitzpatrick, over
an eight-year period, enabling him to move his director loans at Anglo Irish,
off the bank’s books at each September 30th year end, to avoid disclosing them
publicly.
What amount would have triggered some office gossip or a whisper in a pub?
Up the chain of "command," the
other two individuals who were guilty of monumental mismanagement, were Brian Cowen, minister
for finance and John
Hurley , Central Bank
governor .
“This
product (interest-only
loans)
enabled consumers to buy property that they
couldn’t actually afford and may have contributed to the house price bubble,” the
Financial Services Consultative Consumer Panel, said in a May 2009 report. It
was appointed by the minister for finance, to monitor the performance of the
Financial Regulator from a consumer viewpoint “This shows the indispensable need to
scrutinise new products in financial markets.”
“It is not
good enough for the Financial Regulator to ignore products or players it feels
are not within its remit,” it
added.
Irish
banks are resilient and have good shock absorption capacity to cope with the
current situation -
- Patrick
Neary, chief executive, Irish Financial Regulator, September
19, 2008: - two days after the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers.
Two weeks later, the Irish
Government guaranteed all the deposits and liabilities of six Irish financial
institutions. On October 02, 2008, Neary appeared on RTÉ's Prime Time television
programme, and in possibly the most bizarre performance by a public official on
Irish television, since its launch in 1961, said that bad lending by Irish banks
had nothing to do with the current international crisis which was all about
liquidity. He said the banks had plenty of capital to absorb any losses on
property loans and he did not believe that over-exposure to the property market
was a weakness of the Irish banking sector.
The first chief executive of the Financial Regulator Liam O'Reilly, retired at 60 and joined the board of Irish Life & Permanent Plc. He became the first chairman of the Chartered Accountants Regulatory Board (CARB) in April 2007 and later a director of Merrill Lynch International Bank based at the IFSC.
Patrick Neary was appointed to the position of chief executive in February 2006. Prior to this, he held the position of prudential director of the Financial Regulator from 2003. In this role, his responsibilities included the protection of consumers’ deposits, funds and policies. He is a fellow of the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants (FCCA) and was previously Head of Securities and Exchanges Supervision and Deputy Head of Banking Supervision in the Central Bank of Ireland.
Neary was ousted in early 2009 with a golden handshake of €630,000 - - he received a special €202,000 pay-off and a €428,000 retirement lump sum, in accordance with the British 1909 Superannuation Act, and subsequent regulations, entitling retiring civil servants to a lump sum payment of 3/80th per year of service up to a limit of 40 years of service. Employees who joined the civil service prior to April 5, 1995, are entitled to receive their public service pensions on top of their State pensions.
In addition to the initial bonanza, Neary is entitled to an annual pension of €142,670 and every time the incumbent chief executive gets a pay increase, Neary's pension rises.
Prof. Morgan Kelly of University College Dublin and Brendan Keenan, Group Business Editor of Independent Newspapers on Sept 30, 2008, the day the guarantee took effect. Kelly in a stunningtour de force, accurately presents the enfeebled state of Irish banking:
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