In relation to Minister Lenihan letter to the Irish Times (here) which stated amongst other things that: "In the papers on the bank guarantee recently released by my Department and published by the Public Accounts Committee, the Government’s financial advisers Merrill Lynch strongly endorsed the principle that no Irish bank should be allowed to fail against the backdrop of what the Governor describes in his report as “the hysterical state of global financial markets”. Merrill Lynch also recommended a blanket guarantee of Anglo Irish Bank, including, incidentally, subordinated debt."
The Minister was referring to 4 documents available on the Oireachtas site (here) and numbers 3, 4, 5 and 6. Document 6 contains no information on the actual position of the Merrill Lynch.
Transcript of the meeting Merrill Lynch & DoF 26/09/2008: page 1 "On a blanket guarantee for all banks: Merrill Lynch felt could be a mistake and hit national ratings and allow poorer banks to continue" Link: http://www.oireachtas.ie/
Same source, page 2: "More generally, institutions should be encouraged to sell assets & get equity." So Merrill referred to equity capital injections (either in the style of Swedish recapitalizations by the state or private equity sales, with the latter being an unlikely outcome. At no time does the document references the need for a blanket bailout! Minister Lenihan was present at the meeting (see last paragraph of the document to prove this, although the official list of attendees at the top of the document does not include his name).
Merrill's presentation on 26/09 does state (p2) that a guarantee, covering subordinated debt holders as well is: "Best/Most decisive/Most impactfull from market perspective" option of considered. It does not state this to be the case from the taxpayers perspective. Minister Lenihan does not represent the markets interests. He represents taxpayers interests. Thus, if he indeed take the advice from the above statement, he thus knowingly or unknowingly altered the terms of his core responsibilities.
The same presentation voices a number of concerns, some of which are blacked out by DofF... What are these? Link: http://www.oireachtas.ie/
Email from Merrill to K. Cardiff from 29.09/08 18:43(just a few hours before the guarantee was issued and containing final advice by the investment bank to the Government) does not contain any endorsements of the Guarantee (or of any other singular option), despite being based on 26/09 presentation cited in the earlier quote.
But the email does say (p2): "There is no right or wrong answer [to strategic options available to the Gov]... preserving flexibility is key & solution may be different for each institution"
Does this advice sound like a call for a blanket guarantee on all debt holders?
Link: http://www.oireachtas.ie/
There are even deeper issues involved in Minister Lenihan's statement. One of the most troubling ones is why has the Minister summoned the advice of an investment bank that two weeks before the advice was sought (on September 14th) was taken over by Bank of America in questionable condition?
Congressional testimony by Bank of American CEO Kenneth Lewis, as well as internal emails released by the House Oversight Committee, indicate that Bank of America was pushed into the purchase of Merrill Lynch by the US regulators. BofA executives and board were, allegedly, threatened with the firings and were warned of "damaging the relationship between the bank and federal regulators". Full three weeks before Minister Lenihan engaged Merrill Lynch, the company was severely downgraded by its peers in the market (September 5 downgrade by Goldman Sachs is indicative of this and was public at the time).
However, the main issue that arises from Minister Lenihan's letter is that of the purpose of its existence in the first place. Is Minister saying that the Guarantee decision was the correct one? If so, why does he need the defense of being given such an advice? If no, what does his statement about Merrill Lynch advice really tells us? To say that Guarantee was issued because Government advisers said that it was the best option is equivalent to saying that poor weather forecasts has caused Titanic to sink.
1 comment:
Corruption!
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