Resumption of My Arrested Series

Readers will recall that the next, ninth, part of the series was to address the question

so, do they just get away with it, then ?

I was not very happy with the answers that I was getting to my own question, but patience has proved worthwhile, at least to me. While I was contemplating and researching the question, a number of things happened that affect things a little bit:

• Eugene Sheehy, CEO of AIB when "the ship hit the rocks", agreed to forgo part of his pension
• The rump of Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society, which had been consolidated as Irish Banking Resolution Corporation ("IBRC") was put into liquidation by the Government.
• The Liquidators quickly moved to sue Fingleton and others
• Seán Fitzpatrick and two of his former co-directors of Anglo have been formally charged with criminal offences. The charges relate to illegal concealment of loans to directors and to provision of loans by Anglo for the purchase of the Quinn stake in Anglo itself
• Ex-CEO Jim Lacey and some other former directors of NIB (now Danske Bank (Ireland)) were disqualified as directors

As I have previously observed, the crimes on which the Anglo Three will face jury verdicts are not of any real consequence as causes of the Collapse. It is matter of great regret as far as I am concerned that almost all of the time and other resources of the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement("ODCE") were diverted into the project of prosecuting these matters.

The other developments listed above are more significant, in my view. Together, they point the way to how, where the will is present, it is possible for the law to do something in recognition of relevant personal failures on the part of individuals even if, as it appears, no crimes of significance were committed and arrests are therefore ruled out.

Over the next few days, I will be sharing my conclusions in this regard.

Do remember, though: I am, I hope, not indulging in vindictiveness and my use of the phrase "getting away with it" must not be understood as suggesting that any crimes contributed to the Collapse, or that anyone guilty of a criminal offence connected to the Collapse is going unpunished. I cannot guarantee, of course, that the latter is not happening: all I can say is that I am aware of no evidence that it is, and everything that I have seen over the last five years suggests that such evidence is lacking.

Carswell in 60 seconds

Simon will probably be able to digest this in a minute "flat", but no-one else should be upset if it takes them longer than that ! The title originally referred to how long my first draft took to sketch, but to finish it consumed much longer than 60 seconds.

Here is my reaction - it's not really a review - to Simon Carswell's Anglo Republic.

• The crux: Anglo directors were agreed in 2004 that the exposure to development property needed to be reduced sharply, but because the bank lending staff were "deal junkies", they ...just...couldn't
• Another explanation: Chairman Gerry Murphy said in 1995 that the aim was 30% p.a. growth. New C.E.O. David Drumm repeated this target in 2004! Large property deals were the most, um, effective route to this goal...and took the bank over the precipice
• Something that might surprise you #1: Seán FitzPatrick did not like 100% (LTV ratio) loans
• Quotation from FitzPatrick: "We never employed people to tell us why we shouldn't lend" - a bit of an exaggeration, but only a bit
• More crimes were committed during the final slide over the precipice than have previously been revealed
• As the growth "snow-balled", anything, including prudential procedures, that slowed loan approvals was characterised as "inefficient" and was dismantled, wholly or partially. Not a thought seems to have been given to macro issues of sensible lending - all "turnover vanity", little "profit sanity", so to speak. In time, no-one was left who was likely to shout "stop !" or even to hesitate to lend more
• Something that might surprise you #2: Anglo's expense ratio was only one-third of the industry average
• It is tempting to see Seán Quinn as the "real villain", but Anglo was "going down" even without his astonishing shenanigans
• Anglo - other Irish banks too - was full of people with business degrees who had trained as accountants (as opposed to bankers or economists) and who saw banking as "just selling money"
• In early 1990s, 90% of Anglo lending staff were ex-AIB
• Something that might surprise you #3: there was really no "special relationship" with Brian Cowen, or even with Fianna Fáil in general
• At least after the departure in 2005 of Tiarnan O'Mahoney, the funding discipline, such as it had been, disappeared
• The biggest omission from the book: there is no detail on how the loans to Mr FitzPatrick were actually approved e.g. who did the due diligence (if any) ?
• I was surprised at the description of personal guarantees as an "Anglo trademark". During my banking days, which ended in the mid-1980s, they were more associated with my employer, Industrial Credit Company (as it then was named). There was constant pressure on us to abandon the requirement, not just in individual cases but in principle, and by 1985 seeking them was much less prevalent as a practice. How did Anglo get away with it so easily ?
• Something that might surprise you #4: The Financial Regulator was not completely useless: at several points, he obliged Anglo to modify its behaviour

The reasons for Anglo's specific route to disaster viz.

1. the lenders' addiction to deals
2. the ludicrous growth ambitions
3. the weakness of the funding function
4. and (my own gloss) the overall shallowness of the corporate culture

prompt the (for me) obvious question to those directing the other banks, and especially AIB Group

What's your excuse ?