19/6/16: Irish Regulators: Betrayed or Betrayers?..

As I have noted here few weeks ago, Irish Financial Regulator, Central Bank of Ireland and other relevant players had full access to information regarding all contraventions by the Irish banks prior to the Global Financial Crisis. I testified on this matter in a court case in Ireland earlier this year.

Now, belatedly, years after the events took place, Irish media is waking up to the fact that our regulatory authorities have actively participated in creating the conditions that led to the crisis and that have cost lives of people, losses of pensions, savings, homes, health, marriages and so on. And yet, as ever, these regulators and supervisors of the Irish financial system:

1. Remain outside the force of law and beyond the reach of civil lawsuits and damages awards; and
2. Continue to present themselves as competent and able enforcers of regulation capable of preventing and rectifying any future banking crises.

You can read about the latest Irish media 'discoveries' - known previously to all who bothered to look into the system functioning: http://www.breakingnews.ie/business/report-alleges-central-bank-knew-of-fraudulent-transactions-between-anglo-and-ilp-740684.html.

And should you think anything has changed, why here is the so-called 'independent' and 'reformed' Irish Regulator - the Central Bank of Ireland - being silenced by the state organization, the Department of Finance, that is supposed to have no say (except in a consulting role) on regulation of the Irish Financial Services: http://www.independent.ie/business/finance-ignored-central-banks-plea-to-regulate-vulture-funds-34812798.html. 

Please, note: the hedge funds, vulture funds, private equity firms and other shadow banking institutions today constitute a larger share of the financial services markets than traditional banks and lenders.  

Yep. Reforms, new values, vigilance, commitments... we all know they are real, meaningful and... ah, what the hell... it'll be Grand.

27/3/2012: One song, two charts... oh, dear

So long and thanks for all the fish
So sad that it should come to this
We tried to warn you all but oh dear

You may not share our intellect
Which might explain your disrespect
For all the natural wonders that
grow around you

So long, so long and thanks
for all the fish...


Oh...

Do spot that Bank of Ireland name in the above.


via FTAlphaville today's suckers are European taxpayers and economies as the 'dolphin' of Irish banking are stuck in high gear shifting ELA funding for ECB funding. And don't forget that IL&P too dipped in for a cool 2bn (here).And that, of course is translating into the brilliant 'reduction' in Irish banks ELA debts as detailed in the chart here (H/T to AD).


A game of shells big enough to:


The world's about to be destroyed
There's no point getting all annoyed
Lie back and let the planet dissolve
Around you...



Well, may be not the world, but enough to toast Irish economy.

06/09/2011: Recapitalization of Irish Banks 2011

On August 31, 2011 Irish Government committed €17.3 billion of our - taxpayers - money to underwrite banks recapitalization following the PCAR 2011 exercise carried out by the CBofI. Three "banks" - BofI, AIB and IL&P received the funds. Here is the official summary of how these funds were distributed. No comment to follow.

17/06/2011: Who's Confidence is it, folks?

Here are few charts to illustrate the fact that some 3 years into the 'Restoring Confidence' strategy of the successive Irish Governments... and things are not exactly working out.

First straight up, the markets 'voting' on Irish banks:
Looks like investors are not really in tune with Irish Government plans for 'repairing' our banking system despite unprecedented guarantees from the Sovereign which have:

• Explicitly underwritten virtually all deposits and most of the bonds held or issued by the IRL6;
• Implicitly underwritten virtually any extent of losses in the IRL6;
• Explicitly purchased some of the worst 'assets' held by the IRL6; and
• Explicitly underwritten all of the IRL6 funding through ECB and CBofI lending facilities

And what about the entire system of domestic financial institutions? Well, the story is pretty much the same:Recall, thus that at the present (and the picture remains stable in this context since around late 2008):

• Financial investors have no confidence in IRL6 (as these charts illustrate)
  
• Fellow peer banks around the world have no confidence in IRL6 (as clearly indicated by the fact that other banks are not willing to lend to IRL6)
• Bond markets have no confidence in IRL6 (since none of IRL6 can issue any debt paper)
• The ECB has no confidence in IRL6 as it desperately tries to shed their borrowings off its balance sheet (including by shifting it onto CBofI balancesheet)
• Private sector have no confidence in IRL6 as they have taken out some €24 billion worth of funds from IRL6 (per April 2011 data from CBofI) or 23% relative to peak
  

So the only ones still showing confidence in IRL6 is... Irish Government itself, with the Sovereing - itself severely strapped for cash - putting some €18.566 billion worth of taxpayers money into Irish banks deposits since April 2010. That's a whooping ca 8-fold increase in Confidence, then.

02/06/2011: Latest shenanigans at the banks

Two junior bondholders in Allied Irish Banks - Aurelius Capital Management and Abadi Co – are taking the Irish government to court today over the AIB plans to impose burden-sharing on some bondholders in failed banks. Aurelius is a distressed debt investment vehicle which also holds debt of Dubai World so it should be well familiar with the case of haircuts.

These are not investors who bought Irish banks bonds at their full value, but those who pick up distressed debt at a significant discount. However, it is their right to maximize their returns on such investments.

Let us recall that AIB is the sickest of the 4 banks reviewed under the original PCARs back on March 31 this year. Under the stress tests, AIB is expected to lose €3.07bn on Residential Mortgages (all figures refer to stress scenario, 3-year time frame), €972mln on Corporate loans, €2.67bn on SMEs loans, €4.49bn on Commercial Real Estate loans and €1.4bn on Non-mortgage Consumer loans and Other loans. The grand total expected 2011-2013 losses under stressed scenario is €12.6bn or almost ½ of the total expected stress scenario losses across IRL-4 banks of €27.72bn.

Of the €24bn capital buffer for IRL-4 required by the Central Bank PCAR exercise, full €13.3bn is accounted for by AIB.

Which implies that AIB – accounting for just €93.7bn of the €273.94bn of loans held by the IRL-4 at the time of PCARs (just over 34.2% of the total loans of IRL-4) is responsible for over 55.4% of overall capital demands. It is, by a mile, the worst performing bank of IRL-4... Really, folks, 'Be with AIB' as their old commercials would say.

So in the case of AIB, Finance Minister Michael Noonan – the majority shareholder in AIB – is now attempting to impose losses of between 75 and 90 percent on €2.6bn of the bank’s subordinated debt. This means that the bond-holders are expected to contribute just 15-16% of the total cost of the latest bank recapitalization programme. This, of course, is a drop in a sea of pain already levied against Irish taxpayers.

The problem in Ireland is that the so-called subordinated liabilities orders (SLO), which the government is using to force a deal on bondholders is untested in law. Bondholders can claim priority over shareholders in the event of insolvency. But the banks are now existing solely on government life-support. Although they are complete zombies, they are not technically insolvent. This in turn means their equity retains some – if only tiny – value. The Irish Government in the case of AIB driving bondholders’ haircuts can be seen as the means for improving that value to the shareholder at the expense of bondholders, since equity will benefit from lower debt and changes in the capital structure.

In the case of AIB this means two possible things:

• If the court finds in favour of Aurelius and Abadi, the deal is off the table or will be more expensive to execute (lower haircuts), which will in turn imply greater demand on taxpayers to step in. Of course, this also means the Gov in effect destroying a large portion of its own shares value.
• If the court rules in favour of the Gov, the deal is on and we have a precedent for aggressive burden sharing. This, however, will only benefit the majority state-owned banks, i.e. Anglo, INBS, EBS and AIB, and only with respect to savings on subordinated debt.
  

The problem is in the timing of this burden sharing – the previous Gov insistence on paying on bonds in full means that we, the taxpayers, are now on the hook for losses on our shares in the banks via dilution. You don’t have to go far to see what happens here. Just look at Bank of Ireland (below).

Normal process of banks workout should have been:

• Step 1 – Impose losses on shareholders, while preserving depositors by ring-fencing them via specific legislation to remove equivalent status between senior bondholders and depositors. Such legislation can be enacted on the grounds that depositors are not lenders to the activities of the banks, but are clients of the banks for the purpose of safe-keeping of their money. It is also justified from the point of view of finance, as depositors are being paid much lower rates of return on their money, implying lower risk premium
• Step 2 – Impose losses on bondholders via a combination of robust haircuts and debt-for-equity swaps, but only after depositors are protected
• Step 3 – For any amounts of capital still outstanding per writedowns requirements, the Government can then take equity positions in the banks.

This sequence of actions would have prevented depositors runs and repeated taxpayer equity dilutions. It would also have given the Government a mandate to take over and reform failed banks.

By doing everything backwards, we are now in a veritable mess. This mess was not caused by the current Government – it is the toxic legacy of the previous Government which made gross errors in managing the whole banking crisis. This mess is extremely hard to unwind and my sympathies go here to Minister Noonan who is at the very least trying to do something right after years of spoofing and wasting taxpayers money by his predecessor.

Note: The Government is aiming to cut around €5bn from the total bill for bailing out Irish-6 banks. Imposing losses of up to 90 percent on junior bonds in AIB, Bank of Ireland, Irish Life & Permanent and EBS Building Society is on the cards:

• IL&P said it would offer 20cents on the euro for €840m of debt
• EBS wants to pay 10c to 20c on the euro for around €260m of subordinated bonds
• Bank of Ireland is pushing up to 90% discount on €2.6 billion worth of subordinated debt. Bank of Ireland said it would offer holders of Tier 1 securities just 10 percent of the face value of their original investment, and holders of Tier 2 securities 20 percent.

It is revealing, perhaps, of the state of our nation’s policy making that over a year ago myself, Brian Lucey, Peter Mathews, David McWilliams and a small number of other commentators suggested 80-90% haircuts for subordinated bondholders. We were, of course, promptly attacked as ‘reckless’, ‘irresponsible’ and ‘naïve’. Yet, doing this back then would have netted taxpayers savings of more than double the amount hoped for today.

And this is before the savings that could have been generated from avoiding painful dilution of equity holdings acquired by the Government in Irish banks. How painful? Look no further than the unfolding Bank of Ireland saga.

Bank of Ireland's lower Tier 2 paper is trading at 37-40 cents on the euro post-announcement of the after the announcement that T2 will be offered an 80 percent discount alongside with a ‘more attractive’ debt-for-equity swap. Tier 1 paper holders are offered 10 cents on the euro cash ex-accrued interest. Shares swap will factor in accrued interest to sweeten the deal. The debt-equity swap is so powerful of a promise that BofI shares have all but collapsed over the last few days losing over 62% of their already minuscule value. Of course, with Government holding 39% of equity pre-swap, the taxpayers have suffered the same loss as the ordinary shareholders, all courtesy of perverse timing of equity injections by the previous Government.

And there’s more. Even if successful in applying haircuts and swaps to junior bondholders, Bank of Ireland will still need to raise additional €1.6bn from either new investors or existent shareholders (including the Government). Which means even more dilution is to come.

Economics 6/11/10: Two charts - IRL & Spain

Two interesting charts on 5 year bonds for Ireland and Spain, courtesy of CMA:
What's clear from these charts is the extent of inter-links between banks and sovereign credit default swaps. In Spain at least three core banks - La Caixa, BBVA and Banco Santander act as relative diversifiers away from the sovereign risk since late October. In Ireland - all of the banks carry higher risk than sovereign. Another interesting feature is a significant counter-move in the Anglo CDS since late September. This, undoubtedly underpinned by the large-scale bonds redemption undertaken by Anglo at the end of September. Thirdly, an interesting feature of the Irish data is that CDS contracts on Anglo, IL&P and AIB are now trading at virtually identical implied probability of default.

Lastly, Irish sovereign debt is now trading at probability of default higher than that of the Spanish banks!

Economics 31/8/10: IL&P reporting

The ‘healthiest of the sick’, IL&P reports its numbers today. Here are the headlines:

• Operating loss is €10mln in H1 2010, down from a loss of €51mln H1 2009 – causes – lack of further deterioration on 2009 figures on the bank side and serious gains on the life insurance side.
• Operating profits on the life side are €92mln (up from €84mln in H1 2009)
• Bank operating loss of €131mln – equivalent to that in H1 2009. Its clear that 'healthy' IL&P is bleeding heavily on ptsb side.
• Ptsb is one of the largest mortgages lenders in the country, so their mortgages book should be – on average – performing above other banks. Here are some data: arrears > 90 days to the end of June 2010 in Irish residential mortgage book increased to 5.2% of the portfolio (H12009 figure was 3.9% so there was a significant jump). Non-performing mortgages are at 6.9% of the total loan book, up on 4.9% at the end of H2 2009. 32% of arrears cases are related to 100% mortgages – a predictable result as (a) 100% interest-only mortgages are of more recent vintage, hence written against younger families with higher probability of unemployment, and (b) these types of mortgages are more likely to involve purchases of buy-to-rent properties .
• Bad debt provisions are at €150mln compared with €189mln in H1 2009, highlighting the fact that more realistic provisioning earlier in cycle usually helps to underpin the book better than the AIB-style denials. Overall provisions balance is up €141mln to €618m.
• Margins are down to 0.81% (2009 full year margin was a poor 0.83%) despite hikes in the mortgage rates.
  
• As IL&P needs to raise ca €1.3-1.8bn more in bonds (good luck to them trying), higher cost of borrowing is going to further depress margins. So expect even more mortgage rates hikes from IL&P in months ahead. The bank has currently a €8 billion reliance on the ECB, unchanged. Hefty for a minnow.
• Bank’s loan to deposit ratio was down to 240% from 246% - far, far away from the prudential banking model that would imply LTDs of 95-100%.

Economics 03/03/2010: IL&P results FY2009

IL&P – the folks who pushed their mortgages lending to 300% of their deposit base – in the style of Northern Rock – have released their FY 2009 results this morning. Overall operating loss of €196 million for 2009 represents a swing of €537 million against the profit of €341m in 2008 reported in 2008. This takes some doing to achieve for a book of loans valued roughly at €39 billion (and that is widely optimistic – the total lending book declined from €40.1bn in 2008 to €38.6bn in 2009 – a decline that is hardly reflective of the peers).

When considered against the Irish Life division operating profit of €102 million (down from €284 million in 2008) the Permanent bit of IL&P is emerging as a seriously weak link. The bank posted a loss of €270 million with operating loss of €280m – a swing of €310 million on €30 million profit in 2008. Bad debt provisions are set at €376 million – assuming relatively static deterioration in 2010 compared to 2009. Total expected provision for 2009-2011 crisis period is standing around €900-950 million. I am not sure this is realistic, given the fact that mortgages are now starting to show increasing stress – with anticipated lag of legal process and for work-through of savings cushions by distressed households. In contrast with all rational expectations, IL&P management commented that home arrears growth was slowing. Good luck to them.

Capital ratios remain flat over 2009 - Total Tier 1 of 9.2% - hefty, healthy, but… one has to remember that IL&P has a much heavier T1 requirement due to life insurance business side. Translated into banks ratios, this implies effective banking side Tier 1 of roughly 6-6.5% - still better than AIB or BofI, but has some room for improvement. Given the overall reluctance of the Permanent side to take realistic writedowns on mortgages, I would suspect there will be renewed pressure on Tier 1 in months to come.

Economics 02/02/2010: NTMA and the banks

Per RTE Business (here which so far cannot be confirmed by any official material published on the NTMA website):

The NTMA "will now hold talks on capital needs with the institutions covered by the NAMA legislation. Among the other responsibilities it is assuming, the NTMA will also hold discussions with financial institutions on their realignment or restructuring within the banking sector. It will manage the Minister for Finance's shareholding in the banks, advise on banking matters, and crisis prevention, management and resolution."

Here are the interesting aspects of this change that raise a multitude of questions:

1. How will NTMA manage the conflict of interest between its own objectives per above and Nama objectives?
2. How will the potential conflicts of interest be disclosed to the markets?
3. What does it mean that NTMA will hold discussions with financial institutions? Will these discussions be subject to usual market disclosure rules or will they risk constituting a price fixing behavior?
   
4. How can NTMA's direct interference with the banks be compatible with the rights of other shareholders?
5. How will NTMA advising on banking matters etc play out vis-a-vis the roles of the Financial Regulator and the Central Bank?
6. What does 'crisis prevention, management and resolution' refer to? Systemic banking crises? Specific institutions crisis? Will it also include industrial relations crises? How will this process be carried out while respecting the general rules of disclosure and non-collusion with the market?
7. With massive firepower and own objectives, how NTMA will assure that the rights and interests of minority shareholders in the banks are protected?

In effect - even the mere raising of these questions implies that there is a risk that NTMA will be engaged in interfering with the markets for shares and debt in Irish banks in markets-distorting fashion. Amazingly we have no details as to how the Government and NTMA/Nama plan to avoid these problems.


There is another issue at hand here. If, at least in theory, DofF is a publicly accountable institution, NTMA by its statues is a secret entity (with extremely secretive culture to boot). What transparency can we, banks customers, have and what assurance can we hold that NTMA will not act to undermine or violate our rights, the safety of our deposits or our ability to access these?


Lastly, I am rather surprised at the timing of this change. In my view, this statement coming before Nama begins transfers of loans suggests that the Government is preparing for taking up a majority stake in the banks - a majority stake that will require full state control of these institutions management and activities.

So is this statement a precursor to full nationalization of the banks?

Economics 02/01/2010: Comparing banking systems

Based on the latest available data from ECB (through 2008, unfortunately), the following three tables provide relative performance analysis of Irish banking system against its main peers.

In all three sets of comparisons I have:

• included only countries with some proximity (trade / investment / market structure) to Ireland;
• computed some additional (combined) variables using ECB data (group averages and categories totals etc);
• ranked all countries on subsets of criteria shown in each table, so that increasing scores in each case reflect worsening of the rank position; and
• identified in shaded cells the instances where other countries (and/or group average) show poorer performance than Ireland in specific category.

The first table above shows indicators for profitability & efficiency. Here performance rank is computed by assigning the best performing country the score of 1 and the worst performing one the score of 10. There 11 scoring categories in line with the main parameters.

Irish banking system overall comes out as the fourth worst performing in the sample of countries, with significant gap to the group average in terms of sources of income (less stable in the case of Ireland) and total income as a share of assets. Note a very poor performance in net interest income and net fees / commissions - both of these indicators of income will have to be increased in the near future, leading to higher interest charges and fees for retail and corporate clients.

On expenditure side, Irish banks performed above the average, clearly showing that even in the end of 2008 there was virtually no room for improving the margins through further spending cuts. (One caveat - the expenditure side is measured relative to the assets base, so further writedowns on assets in 2009 would have pushed the expenditure performance metric deeper into negative territory). Apart from some layoffs and wages cuts, the sector in Ireland has no choice but to go after income side of the profit margin equation in order to rebuild margins.

On profitability side, provisions & impairments figure is below the average reflecting a clear lack of realism on behalf of the banks. This, in turn, translated into artificially inflated profits, that fell insignificantly short of the group average. However, the relative underperformance of the Irish banking sector was clearly visible in the distribution of returns on equity with most of our banks performing in the lower tier of the group.

The next table shows balancesheets comparatives:Using the same approach as before, I computed rank scores for the countries (note, I omitted countries with no data observations from the sample). Once again, Irish banks come out as below average performers in the group, ranked fourth from the bottom.

Other interesting features of the data:

• On liabilities side - deposits from CBs - or can we call it dependency on CBs liquidity to prop up deposit base is hefty?
  
• Total equity as share of asset base is low.
• Issued capital was low, while reserves are seemingly ok. Issued capital and reserves combined are below average. Ditto for tangible equity.
• On liquidity side, low dependency on interbank market in 2008 really shows the extent to which Irish banks were not being able to access private liquidity pools. So funding base stability was weak.
  

Last table deals with capital adequacy. Once again, Irish banking sector posted a lackluster performance.

Mid-range solvency ratio and Tier 1 ratio in the environment of artificially depressed / unrealistic writedowns and over-inflated assets base is worrisome as are total own funds. Securitization weighted heavily under standardized approach, but this was not captured under the internal approach. Average risk-weight for credit risk were high and total capital requirements for operational risks were the lowest in the group.

Little insight can be gained from operational exposures, as these are obscured by the non-Irish IFSC operations, but corporate exposure and retail exposures combined to a hefty 105% for risk-weighted assets, compared to 91% for the group average. The last two lines - overall solvency ratios are telling. Group average is 12.36%. For Ireland: 91% of all assets were held by the institutions with less than 12% in terms of solvency ratio.

The main conclusions from the tables are:

• Irish banks were too slow to recognise impairments;
• Irish banks profitability is below par, while efficiency is relative robust (with the risk to the downside due to inflated value of assets);
  
• Risk reserves and equity are poor in comparison to other countries, although this does not appear to be a function of regulatory-set reserves; and
• Margins rebuilding on the banks side will have to take place at the expense of retail and corporate clients.
  

Given the lags in the data and in our banks' willingness to face reality of the risks carried on their books, it will probably take well into 2010 (waiting for Nama to become fully operational) for the banks to start in earnest rebuilding their capital and margins positions. Which means that we will not know the true state of our banking sector fundamentals until mid 2011, when the data will be available to cover 2010.

The risk, of course, is that before then, the banks will squeeze all domestic liquidity out of the Irish economy, while the ECB begins to restrict inflow of external liquidity to the system. If that happens, Nama losses and budget deficits will take the second seat to the wave of insolvencies that will hit our country.

Of course, as usual, we have no road map for addressing such risks. Remember - even despite all banking heads insisting publicly that post-Nama there will be no increase in credit flows to SMEs / corporates / households, our Government continues to claim that Nama will be a 'liquidity event' restoring flow of credit to economy.


I will leave you with the following quote:

"Most of this lending is policy-directed with an implicit government guarantee. Despite ...closed factories in *** resulting from the global financial crisis, and hundreds of empty office buildings, retail centres and hotels that are not meeting their debt service payments, banks are still not foreclosing on these properties nor calling the loans due.

The banks prefer to rollover or extend the loans to avoid having to report an increase in non-performing loans. It is not uncommon for *** banks to extend a loan for as much as one year without interest payments if the lender “believes” the ultimate recovery value of the assets will be greater than the outstanding principal and interest. However, it is nearly impossible for a bank to value an empty office building, in a market with a reported vacancy rate nearing 40 per cent ...and declining rents."

The article goes on to argue that for *** this scenario of banks unwilling to recognize losses is risking a derailment of the country progression to the top of the world economic order. The *** is, of course, China. And the article was published here.

But it might have been written about Ireland, where the banks' belief in the ultimate recovery value is nothing more than a punt on selling the distressed rubbish assets to Nama for the price that even at a 30% haircut will reflect an overpayment on their true value of up to 30-40%.

What will Nama do to these assets and how willing it might be to shut down insolvent operations? More willing than the completely reluctant Irish banks? I doubt it.

So where does this leave us at in the beginning of 2010? A Japanese-styled zombie economy scenario for 2010-2025? I hope I am wrong!

Economics 28/07/09: NAMA & Liam Carroll's Case

Of course, the news is in - NAMA got Cabinet approval around 7 pm tonight. This does not change much - we still have a battle to wage to ensure that proper taxpayer protection and risk management, as well as investment strategies and stop-loss rules are put in place, but we are now one step further away from seeing it done.


Per RTE report (here), the High Court has delayed its decision to Friday afternoon on an application by six companies controlled by property developer Liam Carroll to have an examiner appointed to them. There are several significant implications of this for NAMA.

First: it is now clear that any decision will hang over the weekend, providing for increased uncertainty in the banks shares valuations in the days before Monday. Irish banks shares are currently valued as a call option on success of NAMA. If Carroll is not granted an examinership, this will open up a floodgate for the banks to race to force the receivership on other developers in a hope of salvaging whatever value they can under the prospect that NAMA will distort the seniority structure of debts. This, in turn will act to reduce the scope of assets left for NAMA to pick off the banks balancesheets and will force the banks to write down the loans under receivership. The resulting decrease in the future valuation of the big 3 Irish banks will translate in the fall of the value of a call option, thereby reducing the price of the banks shares. Forcing the Carroll decision to Friday afternoon leaves the markets in a serious uncertainty for the next 3 trading days – an uncertainty where anyone staying long in Irish banks shares has a 50:50 chance of not coming out alive, comes the opening bell on Monday.

Second: about that 50:50 chance. Reading into RTE report, one gets a serious sense that examinership might be denied to Carroll. “Senior Counsel Michael Cush said the companies, and the wider Zoe group of which they are a part, had historically been very successful property development businesses. But he said more recently they had experienced difficulty due to credit problems, the downturn in the property market, and problems with investments. In particular, he said difficulties arising from the development of a new headquarters for Anglo Irish Bank at North Wall Quay in Dublin had created significant difficulties. He said Vantive Holdings is now clearly insolvent, as are three other companies related to it. If liquidated, he said, the estimated deficiency of the group as a whole would be over €1 billion.”

This indicates that indeed, aside from historical record, there is no chance for a recovery of the business and that receivership, not examinership should be applied.

Mr Cush also said that “following the drawing up of a business plan in 2008, seven of the companies' eight banks had supported the continuation of the businesses. He said this had required huge forbearance from the banks. Part of the plan, he said, had seen AIB and Bank of Scotland Ireland make available additional finance to pay back third party unsecured creditors, which had since been done. Another feature of the plan saw seven of the banks agree to a moratorium on repayment of the loans and the rolling up of interest. But he said ACCBank, which is owed €136m, or 10% of the six companies' bank debts, had taken a different view, and its intention to have the companies wound up had prompted the application for examinership.”

This is also significant not only because it is showing the scale of banks’ willingness to roll over for large developers – itself hardly a laudable practice – but because it shows clearly that currently insolvent businesses continue to accumulate liabilities (rolled up interest and fresh demands for continuity funding) that are simply cannot be repaid, ever. Again, examinership is not warranted here, since loss minimizations should require an immediate appointment of a receiver to wind down the companies. In fact, this claim invalidates the ‘hardship’ argument about receivership resulting in €1bn loss on current obligations, as it shows that this loss is only going to increase under the case of examinership that will not be able to introduce any chance of reducing the probability of such a loss.

Mr Cush “said that given time, forbearance of the banks (none of which is opposing the examinership application) and the orderly disposal of assets, there has to be a prospect of survival for the companies. He also pointed out that the companies are not envisaging having to write off any of the money they owe the banks, and intend repaying in full.” This is simply impossible under the conditions outlined by Mr Cush in previous paragraphs.


“The court also heard that since the new business plan was put in place [in 2008], the companies had sold 39 residential units, worth €11.7 million.” Which, of course puts these companies cash flow at maximum €23mln pa, with expected loss of €1bn and the combined debt of companies of ca €1.4bn. Now, at 11% yield, the cost of servicing this debt will be around €154mln pa – hardly a sign of ‘survivability’ of the companies.

“Summing up, Mr Cush said it was a most unusual application for examinership as it was not being opposed by any creditors, no debts were being written down, and 90% of creditors were co-operating, all of which must satisfy the requirement for there to be a reasonable prospect of survival.” What Mr Cush neglected to mention is that the lack of opposition by the debtors is simply a jostling for seniority between Irish banks, not a reflection on survivability of the firm.


Carroll’s case shows conclusively that NAMA will transfer liability of the banks and developers onto the taxpayers that is well in excess of the original borrowings. Rolled up interest, operating capital injections and other soft budget constraints for insolvent businesses, like Carroll’s empire were accepted by the banks solely on the anticipation of a state bailout (otherwise these banks actively engaged in destroying their shareholders’ wealth by undertaking knowingly reckless decisions). Once again, the markets have neglected this risk. They might have to reprice that call on Irish banks shares now, or risk being repriced by the more proactive traders comes Monday.

Economics 15/06/2009: policies for growth

For those of you who missed my Sunday Times article, here it is in an unedited version (scroll below).

Here is a link to my Friday's quote in WSJ editorial.


Our Government keeps droning on about Ireland not having a toxic derivatives problem in the banks… Hmmm… unless you count the banks themselves as derivative instruments. Take a look at our loan-to-deposit ratios (LDRs):

AIB: 153% at end-June 2008; 140% in March 2009;
BOI: 174% in September 2007, 157% March 2008, September 2008: at 160.3%,
ILP: 245% in November 2008, 277.4% in September 2008.
Anglo: 124.2% in September 2008
Nationwide: 154% in April 2009 down from 170% in 2007

Now, according to a UBS survey of bank balance sheets of September 2008, Ireland's average loan-to-deposit ratio was 163.1%.

US average: 51% LDR for pre-1960, rising to 85% between 1960 and 1980; breaching 100% in 1997, then 113% in 2007 at its peak, down to 97% May 2009.

Yes, we don’t need securitized packages of MBS tranches to get ourselves thoroughly poisoned…


On to my Sunday Times article:

Over the last two weeks, just as Brian Cowen was exulting over the prospects for Ireland’s return to economic growth thanks to his visionary policies, Russian Government, also facing a major economic crisis, unveiled a new set of economic programmes aimed at getting the state back on track. The package included a tough realistic Budget for 2009-2010, some tax breaks, a commitment to fiscal conservativism, an ambitious set of policies directed at reducing public sector waste, corruption and improving management practices, measures aimed at stimulating private sector investment and demand, and significant new initiatives in R&D and business and technology innovation.

To-date, Irish government sole responses to the crisis have been to raise taxes on businesses, consumers and income earners, and to cut capital investment. All to preserve excessively high level of current public expenditure. Moscow’s response was to cut wasteful spending, lower some business and personal tax rates and rationalise new investment programmes to focus on future growth priorities.

Hence, an ordinary working person in Ireland is now facing an effective tax rate of over 22% - up from 19% a year ago. Her counterpart in Russia is facing a flat rate income tax of 13%, the same as in 2008. An average Irish self-employed person is looking at surrendering over 32% of her income in income tax, up from 29% a year ago. Russian self-employed workers enjoy a new 6% income tax, down from 13%. In terms of incentives, it is clear that Irish Government’s priority is to skin the small entrepreneurs, while the Russians are taking an approach of encouraging individual risk-taking in business.

While Ireland is facing a double-digit fiscal deficit, our current expenditure continues to rise unchecked since July 2008 Government promise to get it under control. The Government is yet to produce a single forecast that actually projects a decrease in current expenditure at any time between now and 2013. This unambiguously signals that Irish leadership envisions fiscal policies adjustments to be fully financed out of increasing tax burden on the ordinary households and businesses.

In contrast, Moscow is cutting spending outside priority areas and temporarily shifting funding from longer-term investment projects. In effect, the Russians retain ring-fenced commitments to invest significant funds in new technologies and SMEs – areas earmarked for future growth, but the Government is borrowing short-term some of the already allocated funds to finance more immediate crisis-related spending.

For example, a year ago, Russian state allocated some €2.3bn for investment in nanotechnologies to cover its programmes over the period of 2009-2015. Last week, the Government wrote Rusnano – semi-state investment company in charge of the funding – an IOU for almost €500mln of these funds, temporarily withdrawing cash without sacrificing any of its investment programmes.

This reveals a more sustainable funding model for state investment in Russia that is based on pre-funding and ring-fencing long-term investment, than the one we have in Ireland, where current revenue is used to finance public investment irrespective of the length of investment horizon.

Other measures enacted by the Russian government in combating this crisis, such as export credits supports, aid to SMEs and state financing of some enterprises (either via equity stake purchases or preferential loans) would fit well in our own policy arsenal, were we more prudent with our expenditures in the years of economic boom. In just 7 years between 2002 and 2008, Russian fiscal authorities built a war chest of funds to sustain necessary public spending and investment. Even after almost a year of financing growing primary imbalances, Russian reserves currently stand at approximately 21% of 2008 GDP. Ireland’s NPRF never exceeded 12% of Ireland’s 2008 GDP – hardly an impressive record of state ‘savings’ over 17 years of robust growth.

History aside, Russian experience shows that forward policy planning and fiscally conservative approach to current spending are the necessary ingredients in dealing with a crisis. Which brings us to the scope for long-range reforms that present a feasible alternative to the present Government plans.

First and foremost, long-term changes are required in our taxation. This much is admitted even by our policy cheerleaders in the Department of Finance and the ESRI. However, to date, there is no indication that the taxation commission is guided in its decisions by the future growth considerations, rather than by the immediate objective of raising new tax revenue.

If Ireland were to seriously pursue high value-added growth development model, our taxation policy has to be altered dramatically. The burden of financing the Exchequer spending, currently disproportionately falling on the shoulders of the above-average income earners (majority of whom represent the same knowledge economy we are trying to expand) must be shifted away from personal income to less mobile physical capital. This will incentivise investments in education, labour productivity-enhancing R&D, training and other forms of human capital, and reduce the wage-costs pressures on companies that operate in the knowledge-intensive sectors. One of the means for delivering such a change would be to levy a significant tax on land offset by reductions in the upper marginal income tax rate.

Another aspect of the tax reform that can stimulate creation of sustainable long-term economic activity in Ireland is an idea of dramatically reducing self-employment and proprietary income tax in line with the Russian experience. Self-employed individuals assume all the risk of running their own business without gaining any of the tax benefits that accrue to corporations. Lowering personal income tax on self-employment to a flat rate of, say, one half of the effective rate of tax applying to an employee earning €60,000 pa (currently standing at 32%) will go a long way in encouraging shift from unemployment into small entrepreneurship.

A different issue is now resting in the hands of yet another Government commission. Current public sector pay, financing systems, and managerial and work practices are simply out of line with the rest of our economy. Across all sectors of Ireland Inc, public sectors sport the lowest value added per unit of labour inputs. Ditto for comparing Irish public sectors productivity against other small open economies within the OECD. Yet, the cost of financing these services is accelerating even during the current downturn, just as the sector overall output is falling. This is hardly news: since the mid 1990s, the range of services and products supplied by the state has been narrowing, yet the staff levels, especially at the top of the pay scale, remuneration costs and non-pay benefits grew.

Reforms must address this exceptionally poor performance, as well as restore pay and benefits to reflect low levels of productivity and value-added delivered by the public sectors.

However, even more important for the long-term growth is to enact systematic principle of separating service provider from the payee. In effect, Irish public sectors are quasi-regulated near-monopolies in their respective industries. Modern services in a small economy cannot function efficiently if the State employees responsible for these services provision are also responsible for pricing and rationing access to the services, regulating services supply and restricting external competition. Irish public sectors price inflation shows conclusively the overall lack of efficiency in our public services provision (see chart).
The Government should elect to provide payment for public access to services, without any prejudice in the choice of service provider. Thus, for example, in health, once standards for quality and safety are adhered to, any approved and properly regulated provider should be allowed to supply medical services to patients. The Exchequer should ensure that those without sufficient income are given state funds to access necessary services. But the Government should exit the business of actually supplying medical services.

Such reforms promise delivering on several key objectives. Experience in other countries, where services provision and access were effectively separated in the 1990s shows that existent service providers do engage in cost-reducing competition, thereby drawing down the cost to the Exchequer. Second, the range and quality of services supplied are improved. Third, granted critical access to the market, new enterprises and thus new employment grow, with some supporting export of such traditionally domestic-only services abroad. Fourth, services consumers do welcome greater choice of service providers and better quality of services. Separation of service provider and payee is a basic concept of organizing modern public services that is yet to dawn on our allegedly highly enlightened politicians and civil servants.

After some 11 months since the current Government has first acknowledged the existence of the economic and financial crises, it is both surprising and disheartening to observe continued lack of policy responses from our leadership. Yet now is not the time to sit on our hands and wait for the US and global economy upturn to rescue Ireland Inc. Instead, it is time we start putting in place few policies that can underpin the recovery in the short run, but can provide support for future long-term growth as well. Tax reforms and public sector revamp certainly top the priorities list.

Daily Economics Update 21/03/2009

Weekly analysis: Irish shares

The volume of shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange has topped the 50-day moving average on six of the seven days that the stock market has been up since March 6 (the day on which the S&P 500 touched its most recent low). The broad benchmark index has gained 15% since that low, sparking hopes of a recovery. The significant issue here is in the volume figure, not in the actual rise in the index, as stronger volumes on a rising trend tend to support more risk-taking and signal investors' support for the trend.

Interestingly, the same, but less pronounced, process has been starting on Friday in the Irish markets.
Chart above shows last week's movements in ISE Total Price Index (IETP), Irish Financials Index (IFIN), AIB, BofI and IL&P shares. Strong upward trajectories here, with significant volatility. But all underpinned by good (well above the average) volumes, as per chart below.This is less pronounced when we normalize daily volumes by historical average, as done in the chart below.
Less extraordinary change is underway above, because we are using moving averages as normalizing variable, implying that we actually capture the inherently rising volatility in volumes traded here. So the above chart actually suggests that while Friday up-tick in share prices (and pretty much the last three day's rally) was reasonably well underpinned, it will take some time to see if market establishes a solid floor under the share prices.

Monthly results so far remain weak. Only BofI was able, so far, to recover all monthly losses and post some gains. AIB is just hitting the point of return to late February valuations. Given that at the point of sale - at the end of February, beginning of March - the volumes traded were 5-7 times those of the current week's peak, it is hard to see the present recovery as being driven by pure psychology and the spillover from the broader global markets (US' momentary lapse of optimism).

Two more charts: recall that in mid February I argued that downgrades in all three financials will come to an end by February's expiration and all three will settle into a nice slow bear rally, running at virtually parallel rates of growth. Chart below shows that this is happening, indeed.Once we normalize prices and account for volumes traded, there is nothing surprising in the share prices movements since the beginning of March. And this is exactly where, as I argued before, the markets should be: awaiting news catalysts...

IL&P: next in line? Update III

And it all is going so swimmingly along the lines of my predictions... except...

Volumes on IL&P were actually up relative to the markets per the first chart below (most likely due to the retail investors still running through some spare cash),and subsequently, correlation between IL&P and the broader sector is staying out of the range where IL&P price deterioration can be attributed to the market-wide downgrade alone (chart below),
but the general price direction of IL&P is pretty much bang on my forecast (per second chart below): after a short uptick earlier in the week, we are again in the rapid downward momentum relative to other banks stocks.The twin stories unfolding alongside each other:

• renewed Bear market momentum for the Irish banking sector, and
• more severe downgrades in IL&P than in the sector itself

are not over yet, so expect a bumpy ride today and more downgrades next week. This week, the catalyst for the sector was a clearly anemic bond issue signaling a threat to the banks guarantee scheme and to the capacity of the state to continue injecting capital into the banking system. Next week - balance sheet worries, lack of any coherent plan on bad assets on behalf of the State plus the Live Register figures - out on Wednesday - will be back to the fore... Oh, and there is an added pressure emerging as well - the rising risk premium on political instability...

IL&P: next in line? Update II

Per Irish Life & Permanent post last week - the predictions of the market downgrades for IL&P have materialised and by now are starting to be exhausted (barring any adverse news). IL&P is now likely to slide toward a general downgrade trend that has plagued the rest of the Irish banking sector.

Here are the updated charts reflecting the call I've made on IL&P last week.

Chart below shows that IL&P is still being pulled away from the rest of the banks, with the share price collapse being much more pronounced. The support for this momentum should be exhausted sooner rather than later, given a hefty sell volume hitting the market.
Chart above shows volumes relative to historic average, with current standing for IL&P sell-off at the local maximum. Again, in my view, this suggests some easing in volumes in days to come.

Chart below shows pure closing price (unadjusted for volume traded), with IL&P's nosedive being steeper than that for other banks. There is some room to travel down the price trend, but the downgrade over the last 3 trading days appears to me deep enough, so that, barring more adverse news, we should see settling of the share price into a gentler downward trend with wavering volume supports.
Finally, the chart below shows volume-adjusted sell-off of IL&P shares in line with the above charts.

Brian Lucey of TCD B-school was last night stressing the issues of the IL&P's uncertain balance sheet and the overall position of the bank in the greater scheme of financial services in Ireland (see Vincent Brown's program recording), although, sadly, this issue was not picked up by either Vincent or other panelists. It is time we put Anglo's saga behind us and start looking at the rest of the sector.

I am also starting to gradually shift into the unpopular view that while Anglo's own share support scheme (that €450mln loan-for-shares deal for the 'Golden Circle' investors) was wrong, ethically unsound and manipulative of the market, the 10 investors themselves (assuming the transaction was cleared by the Financial Regulator and other authorities) should not be scape-goated for their (stupid and financially ruinous) actions.

Instead of disclosing their names, we should demand the disclosure of the names of all incompetent (or negligent - take your pick) employees of CBFSAI who were engaged in clearing the Anglo deal. To date, the blame for the entire affair has been placed solely on the shoulders of private investors who took losses under their own commitments (reportedly covering 30% of the loans total). Instead, it should rest on the shoulders of the Irish regulatory authorities and those in the Department of Finance who knew of the deal and approved it. They are the truly rotten part of the system!

IL&P: next in line? Update

And so the papers today follow our lead...

Tribune (here) starting to smell a rat:
"Irish Life & Permanent (IL&P) and Anglo Irish Bank could be facing fines of €5m each if the Financial Regulator determines the two banks engaged in market abuse by executing €8.2bn in circular transactions to make Anglo's customer deposit base appear more robust. ...which it has called 'completely unacceptable'."
It might be not a smoking gun for IL&P's 'new' sins, but it should keep markets on its trail.

That said, the article has a hint on balance sheet questions for IL&P (and others):
"...banks will either have to demand significant equity from developers or renegotiate loan terms. Most loans were given on the basis of a loan to value ratio, meaning that if the sites are revalued downwards the developer has to come up with the difference. This is viewed as unrealistic. As a result, banks have again moved to avoid formal valuations and there are claims some are setting up special vehicles to move loans off their balance sheet so they can amortise them over time, rather than writing them down."
Well put, boys, revaluing on the balance sheet

• land banks that are virtually worthless
  
• sites that are nearly worthless and
  
• buildings that saw their value decline by 30-50%
  

is 'unrealistic' indeed. I have shown the Anglo Irish Bank's annual results as being clearly indicative of some of this engineering going on (see here). And, since the beginning of 2008, virtually every developer plc has 'renegotiated' its loans covenants. Does anyone seriously believe that the rest of the banks posse is somehow above this Anglo practice?

Ireland is inching closer and closer to the 'Bad Bank' solution that should have been enacted some months ago. At the very least, to repair the repairable - household loans and mortgages - thus providing more room for addressing the developers loans.

The difference today is that we are out of cash to get such a bank going, thanks to a rushed re-capitalization and the Government's unwillingness to extract real value out of public sector waste. And private money is already smelling the roses (here): €10bn outflows out of Ireland in one week - some 5.6% of our GDP or 3.2% of all main banks deposits gone in smoke. What is the downside to the Exchequer on this? Should the outflow continue unabated, within a week or two we will be facing the need for a new round of banks recapitalization, this time around - ca €10bn... and the money will come from?..

The minute the markets recognize this reality - Mr Lenihan with an empty policy gun and the bear still charging undeterred - things are going to get rough.

IL&P: next in line?

All this week, while the politicians were preoccupied with Anglo's saga, I've been watching what appears to be the next downgrade target: IL&P. Intimately linked to the Anglo Irish Bank's shenanigans, IL&P has had a rough ride alongside its other free-standing (for now) peers: the AIB and BofI. Towards the end of this week, it seems, this term - 'alongside' - has become far less descriptive of IL&P's share price behavior.

Are markets on to something we are yet to discover? I don't know, but here is how strange the things got in the course of last week.
Chart above shows correlation between the daily volumes for IL&P shares and the average daily volumes of AIB and BofI shares since December 2008 through February 20 close. Clearly, things gotten a bit out of pattern ever since the local low -0.5 correlation was approached on February 16. More importantly, Friday the 20th of February saw a reversion of correlation down to below 0.25.

As illustrated in the following chart, this is not surprising, given that both AIB and BofI volumes declines on Friday have been countered by a significant volume uptick in IL&P.Of course the volumes changes - especially pattern reversals over historical averages - are significant as they signal (in this case) a rising support to the general direction of share price movement. At this moment, the market appears rather committed to downgrading IL&P, while treating AIB and BofI much lighter.

Of course, the chart above lends some support to my last hypothesis: while both AIB and BofI are seeing moderating decreases in prices alongside falling volumes, IL&P is seeing increasing downward pressure on price alongside increasing volumes (note the chart above plots the product of price to historic average ratio and volume to historic average ratio). But don't take my word for this: chart below illustrates by referring directly to prices.

And the weekly moving average of correlations between closing prices for AIB and BofI with IL&P are starting to show strain as well.On the net, out of the four main parameters I usually use to gauge the possible shifts in market attitude toward a specific stock:

• divergent price moves relative to historic average and peers;
• volume changes to signal increasing support for one share relative to its peers;
• moving price correlations relative to peers diverging away from strong positive values; and
• moving volume correlations diverging from strong positive values

all four are currently signaling some potentially new concerns about IL&P emerging in the market. Can it be the aftermath of the Anglo affair? Possible. But how likely is such a scenario given extensive downgrades to IL&P on the back Anglo's news in the past and given that by now the company has been devalued as if it were a pure banking sector play, effectively discounting the insurance side of business to nil (chart below).

Can it be that the markets are becoming aware of some new set of skeletons in IL&P's closets? Also, possible. And, given the scandals surrounding Anglo, Irish Nationwide and other players, somewhat probable as well.

Of course, time will tell for sure, but I would watch IL&P very closely on Monday...

PS: Oh, yes and intraday volatility for IL&P is also moving against the peers:

Anglo Irish Bank Annual Report

http://www.rns-pdf.londonstockexchange.com/rns/6782N_-2009-2-20.pdf

The link to the most wanted publication - the Anglo's annual report for 2008.

Let anyone reading this while posessing knowledge in corporate finance and balance sheet analysis (I have none) comment on this and any other findings relating to the report.

So... guess what? The report is a hog wash, containing no real information on

• the impairments outlook,
  
• the reclassification of the loans,
  
• loans under 'watch'
• roll-overs of loans, and so on.

The IL&P loan/deposit scheme is there for all to see, but what it implies is not. It implies that short of IL&P intervention, Anglo had a negative core capital reserves at the time of the announced guarantee scheme. Do the math: Core Tier 1 Capital for 2008: €5,068mln. Per page 4 of report: "At 30 September 2008 the Group’s balance sheet includes €7.5 billion of short term interbank placements with Irish Life & Permanent plc and €7.3 billion of non-retail customer deposits with Irish Life Assurance plc". Oh, my...

Other notables:

• page 6: Ireland lending up from €37bn in 2007 to €42.8bn in 2008. Given lack of demand for new loans and tight credit finance, is a part of this growth due to the rollover of non-performing loans with interest charges absorbed into 'new' loans? The report says: "In keeping with the Bank’s relationship based banking model, lending activity during the year was targeted solely towards the Bank’s longstanding customer base." Should we read this as 'the long-term developers reclassifying and rolling over loans'?
  
• page 7: Impairment charge on the loan book went from 0.5% in 2007 to 1.31% in 2008. Again, no guidance on future impairment charges, but should we agree with my/analysts numbers produced in December (here), we are looking at 4-5.3% impairment on property-linked loans or 3.5-4.6% on loan book. Some distance to travel yet.
• page 70 §12: total provisions for impairment were up from €149mln in 2007 to €879mln in 2008. Again, applying this dynamic to the 2008 figures and projecting into 2009, expected impairment charge for 2009 should be around 5%. Even assuming away the counterparty risk under the investment securities impairment (which might be unlikely to remain as high in 2009 as in 2008), we have a consolidated projected loan impairment charge for 2009 of 5.1% - higher than my 4.6% moderate risk scenario forecast.
• page 74 §20: serious fall off in financial assets held, with a rise in unlisted financial assets - is this again showing some financial engineering on the existent loans side? Unlisted assets against customers' liabilities up over 10% y-o-y, listed - down by ca 60%... losing the 'house' while accumulating the 'rubble'?
• page 81 §22: serious deterioration in the quality of loans and advances to banks. AAA/AA rateds down by more than 1/2, A rateds up by a factor of 3+. And this is to September 30, 2008, since when things went even further South globally. Ouch...
• page 82 §24: assets available for sale securities are ramped up in 2007 and unwound in 2008, potentially depleting the assets risk cushion? Per table below, one has to have a laugh at the AAA/AA classification of a lion's share of Mortgage Securities and ABS. Take

1. the financial institutions downgrades across Ireland (assume 10% moves to BBB and 20% to A),
   
2. the mortgage securities at 15% negative equity (corresponding to the estimated 120,000 households) to BBB level and
   
3. ABS at 25% (US-level) downgrade to Sub-investment Grade and further 25% downgrade to BBB and

you get: AAA/AA total drops to €5,751mln from €6,742mln in 2008, while BBB and lower rises from €197mln to €579mln. All sub-AA classed available-for-sale assets fall from €1,993mln in 2007 to €1,410mln per Report (despite the fact that the quality of may underlying asset classes has been deteriorating during 2008 worldwide, although, apparently not on Anglo's books), but rises to €2,212mln in 2008 terms under my assumptions. What is more plausible, folks?

• page 84 §25: total loans and advances to customers per Bank itself were up €12.5bn in 2008;
• page 86 §25: Lower quality, but not past due nor impaired loans: up from €363mln in 2007 to €2,736mln in 2008, past due but not impaired: up from €1,621 in 2007 to €1,782mln in 2008, impaired up from €335mln in 2007 to €957mln. In the mean time, satisfactory quality loans amounts moved from €322ml in 2007 to €6,302mln in 2008. So in common parlance terms, Anglo's 'slury' loans creek has swell from ca €2,641mln in 2007 to €11,777mln in 2008, an increase of 359% - all in the year when impairement charge officially went up by only 162%. Now, taking 2008 impairment ratio at this rate of deterioration in the quality of loans implies 2009 impairment charge of 4.5% across the entire book (see the second bullet point above)... Hmmmm, someone is foolin here?
• pages 148-149 show loans to Directors and related parties. No new skeletons here - Sean Fitzpatrick is the only name on the list, with the rest of Directors names missing next to loans amounts. Anglo issued loans against its own shares as underlying collateral guarantee funds, and held no impairment provisions for Directors loans.
• page 150: a small goodie: "During 2008 close family members of Sean FitzPatrick received rental income from the Group of €31,500 (2007: €35,500) in respect of a UK property that, rather than hotels, is actively used to accommodate Group employees working in the UK on a temporary basis. Total future minimum payments under the tenancy agreement are €7,600 (2007: €8,600)." So buy-to-let UK markets are alive and kicking then...
  

Ah, I might as well stop at this point. Let anyone reading this while posessing knowledge in corporate finance and balance sheet analysis (I have none) comment on this and any other findings relating to the report.

I am staying off Anglo case for now, having done more than our wonderous Minister for Finance, who could not be bothered to read the entire PWC report on banks he was generously recapitalizing with the taxpayers' money.