Should Irish bank bosses say sorry like their UK counterparts have done?

K-9

nesf wrote: »

Because it appears (though it is untested) that boards.ie has the same liability for posts on it that a newspaper does for articles it chooses to print. Which is stupid, but the area is very new legally so is relatively unknown. There is already one case going on for similar reasons.

Was pondering on PTSB, Not Boards!

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

Was pondering on PTSB, Not Boards!

Ah, I cannot think of a single legitimate reason other than Anglo offering an extremely good rate for the deposit but bluntly, Anglo was in such trouble that it'd make you wonder why they'd do such a thing.

gurramok

Yeh, Irish libel laws. You need to move boards to the US and be owned by a US national or something to be free of libel. If not US, try somewhere where they cannot get you like Gaza

More news on Anglo http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0210/breaking90.htm
They(ILP) put a multi-billion deposit there for less than 10days which just so happens was the end of the financial year for Anglo. Coincidence of course

As per topic, I'm quite taken aback by a small amount of posters who saw no need for any bank to say sorry, guess the UK is different and accountable after all, its quite shocking :eek:

nesf

gurramok wrote: »

More news on Anglo http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0210/breaking90.htm
They(ILP) put a multi-billion deposit there for less than 10days which just so happens was the end of the financial year for Anglo. Coincidence of course

Yeah, we've been discussing for the previous 10 or so posts.

Pretty dodgy all right though.

K-9

nesf wrote: »

Ah, I cannot think of a single legitimate reason other than Anglo offering an extremely good rate for the deposit but bluntly, Anglo was in such trouble that it'd make you wonder why they'd do such a thing.

One shakey bank supporting another.

This was 30 September 2008.

What 2 banks were the lowest and taking the biggest hits on the Stock Exchange?

SkepticOne

nesf wrote: »

Yeah, we've been discussing for the previous 10 or so posts.

Pretty dodgy all right though.

I like the comment from ILP “During a period of unprecedented turmoil in global financial markets, there was an acceptance that financial institutions would seek to provide each other with appropriate support where possible.”

Makes you wonder what else was going on given that the regulator did not see this going on.

bonkey

jmayo wrote: »

If your Irish banks were seen as totally above board, why will no investors touch them.

Because its not the best investment strategy right now.

If you have a company quoted on the SE today which is still making money and didn't get hit at all by the whole collapse....its share price will almost certainly have dropped anyway.

Why? Why would investors shy away from profitable, sound companies? Simple - because they're looking at the entire market rather than the individual companies. There's a ripple effect...they know that others will do this, so that even if they buy in to a good bet, share price is likely to fall, resulting in a loss. Better to let the price fall, and buy in at (or close to) the bottom.

In a falling market, you make money by short-selling. Picking the most solid business cases to invest in is a loss-minimisation strategy.

Once the market turns around, or even levels out....then there's a case to be made for finding the solid performers.

So just because someone won't invest in the bank today doesn't mean that the bank has no business model worth talking about.

If I was an investor, once it looked likely that the government would intervene, I'd have stayed away from the bank as though it was as toxic as the investments which got them into this mess. I'd have considered short-selling. I'd have let the price fall and fall, so that when the government bought in and the thing flattened or started turning around, I could buy in at an even lower price, and stand to make even more money. This strategy would also give me the out that if I thought the rescue package was going to cause more damage than it would fix, I wouldn't be invested with anything to lose.

If it was a simple case of "good business model == invest", the stock market would, frankly, not exist.

SkepticOne

stepbar wrote: »

Reckness lending? Jeasus you'd sware the banks went up to the CIF and said "Here boys, share a 100billion amoungst ye there and shur don't worry about paying it back... there's load more where that came from!!!"

It does look like that is what happened. Sure there were "professional valuations" of land and the motions were gone through of looking at finances, but at the end of the day a huge mistake was made. The mistake was believing that an obviously unsustainable situation was sustainable. I would have no problem with this normally. Businesses make mistakes all the time. They don't get to make the excuse that they followed all the correct procedures. Bottom line: they ****ed up and that is that. But this time it is the country that has to pick up the pieces of the business failures of banks.

bonkey

gurramok wrote: »

The derivatives market imploded a full year(Aug 2007) after the Irish housing bubble started to collapse(Aug 2006) so passing the buck does not work.

It doesn't work if you use different criteria to choose your dates.

The derivatives market started getting into trouble (started collapsing, if you prefer) in 2005, based on the US sub-prime mortgage crisis. It imploded in 2007.

The irish market started getting into trouble (started collapsing, if you prefer) in 2006. It imploded in 2008.

So yes, if take the earlier date of the Irish situation, but the later date of the US one, you can come to the conclusion that I have things out of sequence.

In both cases - derivatives and the irish lending - we can look back at it with perfect hindsight and say that all the warning signs were there....and they were. Part of the problem was that all the warning signs were there when things were going well, and people predicted far too many "imminent failures".

jmayo

nesf wrote: »

I think we're going to get an answer on that from the sound of things. At the very least the P. TSB deposit represented something very close to a deliberate misleading of the markets which is extremely serious though I would refrain (and would ask everyone else to refrain) from directly saying that it was illegal or that Fitzpatrick etc did something illegal for libel reasons (i.e. I'll have to remove them because boards.ie might get sued).

As our banking buddy stepbar would say "there was nothing illegal", and why should they bother about ethics. Sure it's all a big laugh.
People like that make my blood boil.
Any sane investor now will not go near an Irish company never mind and Irish bank.
Maybe it is time for a bit of mob rule in this country.

gurramok wrote: »

Yeh, Irish libel laws. You need to move boards to the US and be owned by a US national or something to be free of libel. If not US, try somewhere where they cannot get you like Gaza

More news on Anglo http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0210/breaking90.htm
They(ILP) put a multi-billion deposit there for less than 10days which just so happens was the end of the financial year for Anglo. Coincidence of course

As per topic, I'm quite taken aback by a small amount of posters who saw no need for any bank to say sorry, guess the UK is different and accountable after all, its quite shocking :eek:

Gurramok, these banking posters just see us as a means to getting better returns and bonuses. Sure if they have to bend a few rules, there is nothing illegal mind since our laws are stacked in their favour and even then the regulators enforcing them are in the old boys club.

bonkey wrote: »

Because its not the best investment strategy right now.

That would be putting it mildly.
Put another way, as an investor, you don't know if the institutions you are investing may (note I said MAY) be breaking laws as per the US jurisdiction.
Of course according to Irish laws they may have done nothing wrong.

bonkey wrote: »

Why? Why would investors shy away from profitable, sound companies?

Stop moving the goalposts, lets stick to banks and financial institutions and not companies that appear to be managed according to the companies acts.
How do we know they are sound, how do we know that there deposits are here today gone tomorrow ala Anglo ?

BTW I thought short selling of financial institution stock was still banned ?

[/QUOTE]

SkepticOne wrote: »

It does look like that is what happened. Sure there were "professional valuations" of land and the motions were gone through of looking at finances, but at the end of the day a huge mistake was made. The mistake was that an obviously unsustainable situation was sustainable. I would have no problem with this normally. Businesses make mistakes all the time. They don't get to make the excuse that they followed all the correct procedures. Bottom line: they ****ed up and that is that. But this time it is the country that has to pick up the pieces of the business failures of banks.

Look at Dublin Docklands Authority, who became property speculators partially funded by the bank who had directors on the boards of both.
Is the DAA not a quango setup by the government?
Who said they could go off and start speculating on property ?

Follow the money and see where it leads, because there is a lot more of a stink to come out.

SkepticOne

jmayo wrote: »

Follow the money and see where it leads, because there is a lot more of a stink to come out.

Also I find it very hard to believe that a 4 billion deposit in Anglo from ILP could be overlooked by the the regulator. Do they not look at transactions?

thebman

Shouldn't it be the law to behave ethically though?

I know some of it would be open to interpretation but basically a single sector brings the economy to its knees by foolish, unethical business practice then shouldn't that be illegal and wouldn't it be obvious that it was a wrongful action?

I know its probably impossible, wishful thinking though Even if you could do it, the political will isn't there since they are the most unethical of all.

SkepticOne

bonkey wrote: »

In both cases - derivatives and the irish lending - we can look back at it with perfect hindsight and say that all the warning signs were there....and they were. Part of the problem was that all the warning signs were there when things were going well, and people predicted far too many "imminent failures".

I would regard this as a cop-out answer. Either you heeded the warning signs and took action or you did not. There will always be people warning of collapse just as there will always be people saying things are just fine. The banks chose to listen to one side and not the other.

ionix5891

http://cynicuseconomicus.blogspot.com/2009/02/yes-bankers-bear-responsibility-but-now.html

I will refer you to a link here, in which it is revealed that there was an electronic run on the US banking system in September, revealed in a C-span broadcast:
At 2 minutes, 20 seconds into this C-Span video clip, Kanjorski reports on a "tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars." According to Kanjorski, this electronic transfer occurred over the period of an hour or two
I suggest that watching this will correct any misconceptions that the $US and world economy is not currently in a position of extreme fragility. The really odd thing about this is that the media have not grabbed hold of it yet.

However, with their cap in hand for ever more bailout money, one of the prices that the bankers have to pay is to take the full measure of blame on their own shoulders. They are not in a position to point their fingers at the others who have been complicit in the mess that has been created. The price is that blame is doled out to them, and they must bend over and take the beating on behalf of all of those who are responsible. Perhaps one of the more moronic variants in the media can be found in the Telegraph, regarding the enquiry into the crisis. I recommend reading this, if only to illustrate how puerile the whole business has become.

These enquiries also serve a more immediate distraction, which is to shift focus away from why so much money is being poured into an insolvent banking system.

jmayo

SkepticOne wrote: »

Also I find it very hard to believe that a 4 billion deposit in Anglo from ILP could be overlooked by the the regulator. Do they not look at transactions?

Common sense would say they (auditors and bank regulators) look for large transactions before year end and just after as per say the directors' loans and now the digout from IL&P.

AFAIK auditors would also look at what director loans they were and not just at the last days of the year.
How the auditors did not spot these transactions and how the financial regulators office did nothing about transactions, even though it is climed that they knew about some of these for years beggars believe.

There is too cushy an atmosphere here, there are too many connections between all the players, where authorities don't want to rock the boat and thus it seems let stuff slide.

Either we really clean up, bring very tough corporate governance laws, bring in non connected foreign entities to regulate or we will be looking at this type of thing again.
Sure aren't the government already touting that we need to move on and not look to the past.
In other words leave us and our friends alone because why should we take the blame for the fact the people of this country are sent back 30 odd years in development terms.

Either we learn from the past, make people responsible for their actions and maybe have the equivalent of an old fashioned lynching of the bad ones or we will never move on.
Heads need to role, people responsible need to be screwed and left without a penny, so that us the people at least have some consolation as we enter these dark days.

But sure maybe we can have a few more tribunals, ala the Irish solution to an Irish problem :eek:

bonkey

SkepticOne wrote: »

I would regard this as a cop-out answer. Either you heeded the warning signs and took action or you did not.

With hindsight...yes, its that simple.

Without hindsight, its a bit more tricky.

You have a set of events which you have to decide are or are not a warning sign. If you figure out they are a warning sign, then you have to also decide what they are warning of. Then you get to take your actions.

With hindsight, its much simpler. We know they were warning signs. We know what they were warning of. We know whether or not the actions taken worked.

There will always be people warning of collapse just as there will always be people saying things are just fine. The banks chose to listen to one side and not the other.

They got it wrong. We need to understand how they got it wrong. Its important that we understand that in as much detail as possible, so that we can be aware of which risks are real and which imagined for the future.

Its a bit like the whole government bailout. We have people saying its a good thing. We have people saying its a bad thing. We have people saying its a good idea, but being done wrong. Some people think we should let the banks collapse. Some argue that we don't know that they won't collapse anyway.

Regardless of what happens, its almost-certain that at least all-bar-one of those stances will be shown to be incorrect. The incorrect predictions and predictors will be forgotten - resigned to the annals of history. We will then look back on it, and say that it was all so obvious, and all we had to do was heed the signs.

P. Breathnach

bonkey wrote: »

Regardless of what happens, its almost-certain that at least all-bar-one of those stances will be shown to be incorrect. The incorrect predictions and predictors will be forgotten - resigned to the annals of history. We will then look back on it, and say that it was all so obvious, and all we had to do was heed the signs.

Very good observation. What forum do you moderate?

SkepticOne

bonkey wrote: »

With hindsight...yes, its that simple.

Without hindsight, its a bit more tricky.

You have a set of events which you have to decide are or are not a warning sign. If you figure out they are a warning sign, then you have to also decide what they are warning of. Then you get to take your actions.

With hindsight, its much simpler. We know they were warning signs. We know what they were warning of. We know whether or not the actions taken worked.

What the "oh thats all very well in hindsight" mindset is really saying is that these events could not possibly have been foreseen. Therefore those making the decisions bear no responsibility. I have a huge problem with this. It is this mindset I believe is at the root of the problem in Ireland and other countries.

They got it wrong. We need to understand how they got it wrong. Its important that we understand that in as much detail as possible, so that we can be aware of which risks are real and which imagined for the future.

Unfortunately if you are a subscriber to the "oh that's all very well in hindsight" school of thought, no matter how much you analyise the situation the response is always the same: no one could possibly have seen this coming. Those who warned were merely delluding themselves.

Its a bit like the whole government bailout. We have people saying its a good thing. We have people saying its a bad thing. We have people saying its a good idea, but being done wrong. Some people think we should let the banks collapse. Some argue that we don't know that they won't collapse anyway.

Regardless of what happens, its almost-certain that at least all-bar-one of those stances will be shown to be incorrect. The incorrect predictions and predictors will be forgotten - resigned to the annals of history. We will then look back on it, and say that it was all so obvious, and all we had to do was heed the signs.

No, we can acknowlege that there are people making all sorts of warnings and pointing to various signs but we can still take responsibility. Although this is an oversimplification, there were people warning that the construction industry was on an unsustainable path. There were others saying that, no, everything was fine. Banks decided to listen to the second group and ignore the first. Saying "its all very well in hindsight" is rather insulting to those in the first group. You are denying them their right to be right. But more importantly you are saying that there is no point in trying to foresee problems, that you can only ever be coincidentally right. I have a problem with this because it lets decision makers (people who are very highly paid to foresee problems) totally off the hook.

gurramok

bonkey wrote: »

It doesn't work if you use different criteria to choose your dates.

The derivatives market started getting into trouble (started collapsing, if you prefer) in 2005, based on the US sub-prime mortgage crisis. It imploded in 2007.

The irish market started getting into trouble (started collapsing, if you prefer) in 2006. It imploded in 2008.

So yes, if take the earlier date of the Irish situation, but the later date of the US one, you can come to the conclusion that I have things out of sequence.

In both cases - derivatives and the irish lending - we can look back at it with perfect hindsight and say that all the warning signs were there....and they were. Part of the problem was that all the warning signs were there when things were going well, and people predicted far too many "imminent failures".

'The irish market started getting into trouble (started collapsing, if you prefer) in 2006. It imploded in it is still bursting'
No matter what choice of words you use, do i have to source countless articles for you to show the thing started to go haywire in mid-late 2006?!!

It has not yet fully collapsed, a typical bubble can take anything from 4-7yrs to fully burst or 'imploded' using your words, some take longer like the Japanese one.

So we have that the derivatives started collapsing in 2005 and imploded in 2007.
So lets see, using your analysis where you amongst others foresaw, Irish banks continually lent billions of euros to developers as well as homebuyers using derivatives or not from 2005 to at least end of 2007 and yet they did not see what you saw?

We have had words like 'aggressive', 'poor judgment' and now they were 'wrong' to add to the list, it was reckless and about time they said sorry for the whole mess.

Even Elton John found it hard to say sorry http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2e4NlnLr28

bonkey

SkepticOne wrote: »

What the "oh thats all very well in hindsight" mindset is really saying is that these events could not possibly have been foreseen. Therefore those making the decisions bear no responsibility. I have a huge problem with this.

I'd have a huge problem with it as well. For a start, I'd never agree that it removes responsibility. I've never even suggested it removes responsibility.

At the moment, though, my problem is with I perceive as an equally closed-minded approach of "of course they could see it coming" coupled with what seems to be "and they're completely, 100% to blame for everything that went wrong".

I'm not advocating one extreme over the other. I'm advocating that we consider the possibilities, look at the details, and draw more balanced conclusions.

Saying "its all very well in hindsight" is rather insulting to those in the first group.

That applies both ways. "No way to know" is as one-sided as "absolutely clear-cut". I've advocated neither, merely criticised one which seems to be taken as support of the other, despite me additionally pointing out that there's a hell of a lot of ground between the two.

But more importantly you are saying that there is no point in trying to foresee problems, that you can only ever be coincidentally right. I have a problem with this because it lets decision makers (people who are very highly paid to foresee problems) totally off the hook.

See? You're trying to reduce it to the black and white situation of two options. I criticise the mentality of "completely to blame...totally cut and dried" and therefore I'm apparently saying "no blame...no possible way of knowing".

ChocolateSauce

No, we should be taking their homes and assets, and we should also be tracking down the people who allowed them the legal right to be so reckless, starting with Bill Clinton and moving up to Bush.

SkepticOne

bonkey wrote: »

I'm not advocating one extreme over the other. I'm advocating that we consider the possibilities, look at the details, and draw more balanced conclusions.

That applies both ways. "No way to know" is as one-sided as "absolutely clear-cut". I've advocated neither, merely criticised one which seems to be taken as support of the other, despite me additionally pointing out that there's a hell of a lot of ground between the two.

If your point is that there's a middle ground then I agree with you that this is the case. However if I want to point out that there's something they should have foreseen but did not, then you can always say "that's all very well in hindsight". So it is a kind of meaningless put down that has no response. It is a barrier to understanding.

There are certain things that I believe genuinely should have been foreseen by those who are highly paid to see obstacles ahead. But there's no point in me arguing this because no matter what it is, it can always be said "oh that's fine with hindsight" which, imo, is a meaningless tautology.

I heard one of the British bankers today saying "In hindsight we were wrong". To me this is evading responsibility since it is an excuse that can always be made.

nesf

SkepticOne wrote: »

If your point is that there's a middle ground then I agree with you that this is the case. However if I want to point out that there's something they should have foreseen but did not, then you can always say "that's all very well in hindsight". So it is a kind of meaningless put down that has no response. It is a barrier to understanding.

Well for instance, one could with full confidence say that the banks knew the property bubble would burst and so did the regulator. What you can also say with full confidence is that the banks almost certainly did not foresee the prolonged collapse in the global credit markets. The problem is whether the recapitalisation (of the larger banks) is more of a result of the former or the latter and from looking at international circumstances I'd be inclined to say the latter is primary cause of their present difficulties. Not that any of this absolves them of responsibility or anything for all the stuff they did do wrong.

SkepticOne

nesf wrote: »

Well for instance, one could with full confidence say that the banks knew the property bubble would burst and so did the regulator. What you can also say with full confidence is that the banks almost certainly did not foresee the prolonged collapse in the global credit markets. The problem is whether the recapitalisation (of the larger banks) is more of a result of the former or the latter and from looking at international circumstances I'd be inclined to say the latter is primary cause of their present difficulties. Not that any of this absolves them of responsibility or anything for all the stuff they did do wrong.

At least there is something to debate there. A discussion is possible once you stop using what, in my opinion, are meaningless tautologies. I believe that although some of them believed there was a bit of over-valuation, they underestimated the degree of it by a large amount and this made the banks more vulnerable to international financial problems. There have been bank collapses solely from the bursting of bubbles in other coutries so it is not inconcievable that the same would not have happened here. But what is clear is that we would have all been in a better position had certain warnings been heeded several years ago.

nesf

SkepticOne wrote: »

At least there is something to debate there. A discussion is possible once you stop using what, in my opinion, are meaningless tautologies. I believe that although some of them believed there was a bit of over-valuation, they underestimated the degree of it by a large amount and this made the banks more vulnerable to international financial problems. There have been bank collapses solely from the bursting of bubbles in other coutries so it is not inconcievable that the same would not have happened here. But what is clear is that we would have all been in a better position had certain warnings been heeded several years ago.

I'd argue that AIB and BoI weren't horribly overextended to the point to the bubble bursting on its own would bring them down, purely because they did play it conservatively with mortgages. At the other end of the scale the banks who were taking on the riskier people at a higher interest rate were going to be far more vulnerable to collapse with the bursting of the bubble.

SkepticOne

nesf wrote: »

I'd argue that AIB and BoI weren't horribly overextended to the point to the bubble bursting on its own would bring them down, purely because they did play it conservatively with mortgages. At the other end of the scale the banks who were taking on the riskier people at a higher interest rate were going to be far more vulnerable to collapse with the bursting of the bubble.

I think we would still have seen Anglo go under and possibly one other bank had it not been for intervention. We would probably also have had a recession based purely on the ending of the building boom and this might have led to difficulties among mortgage payers especially if the slump spread to other areas of the economy. There was certainly a case for lending rules to be tightened but they were not. It also did not help that banks paid economists to explain how there would be no crash but rather an eventual easing of growth in the distant future.

nesf

SkepticOne wrote: »

I think we would still have seen Anglo go under and possibly one other bank had it not been for intervention.

I agree and but I think it would have been a small fraction of the burden that we now need to take on to support our financial industry.

SkepticOne wrote: »

We would probably also have had a recession based purely on the ending of the building boom and this might have led to difficulties among mortgage payers especially if the slump spread to other areas of the economy.

We would have but we wouldn't be going through what we're going through now because external demand wouldn't have plummeted and our export sector which we are hugely dependent on wouldn't be is such dire straits.

gurramok

bonkey wrote: »

I'd have a huge problem with it as well. For a start, I'd never agree that it removes responsibility. I've never even suggested it removes responsibility.

At the moment, though, my problem is with I perceive as an equally closed-minded approach of "of course they could see it coming" coupled with what seems to be "and they're completely, 100% to blame for everything that went wrong".

I'm not advocating one extreme over the other. I'm advocating that we consider the possibilities, look at the details, and draw more balanced conclusions.


That applies both ways. "No way to know" is as one-sided as "absolutely clear-cut". I've advocated neither, merely criticised one which seems to be taken as support of the other, despite me additionally pointing out that there's a hell of a lot of ground between the two.


See? You're trying to reduce it to the black and white situation of two options. I criticise the mentality of "completely to blame...totally cut and dried" and therefore I'm apparently saying "no blame...no possible way of knowing".

As SkepticOne stated, past performance of housing bubbles have always resulted in banking failures. (Finland/Japan for example)

And why did those bubbles end up with banks failing without a credit crunch?

The answer is because they overstretched themselves to primarily developers in both residential and commercial development. Here, Irish banks were too smug to not believe the same could happen on past performance of previous bubbles hence it is not a grey issue, your excuse for them is not valid. The evidence of previous bubbles is there, a simple googling by a bank executive of the words 'housing bubble' or a read of the various books written by economists would of educated them!

nesf wrote: »

Well for instance, one could with full confidence say that the banks knew the property bubble would burst and so did the regulator. What you can also say with full confidence is that the banks almost certainly did not foresee the prolonged collapse in the global credit markets. The problem is whether the recapitalisation (of the larger banks) is more of a result of the former or the latter and from looking at international circumstances I'd be inclined to say the latter is primary cause of their present difficulties. Not that any of this absolves them of responsibility or anything for all the stuff they did do wrong.

Again to SkepticOne's post. Why would the Irish housing/commercial bubble be any different to any of its predecessors around the globe which never had a credit crunch?
The previous form was there that it would all end in tears and they blatantly ignored it to make money.
I strongly disagree that the latter you emphasise is the cause of their difficulties, it only made it worse. They bet their money on a horse and lost it.

News today about AIB & BOI especially. http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0212/banks.html

Meanwhile, Bank of Ireland has doubled its estimate of the amount of loans it believes may not be repaid.

The bank told markets that in a worst case scenario, the value of impaired loans on its balance sheet could increase by almost 60% to €6bn by 2011.

The bank had previously issued guidance in November saying the figure for impaired loans amongst property developers and other lending would be €3.8bn.

Impaired loans are loans the bank is worried will have to be either partially or entirely written off in the future.

However, the bank said the Government's injection of €3.5bn into the bank meant it was confident it would withstand the impact of what it termed the deteriorating credit environment.

It said much of the deteriorating loan situation in its second half of the year arises from its property and construction development portfolio.

However the bank said that including the Government's €3.5bn injection, it has €10.8bn cash to buffer against those impairments becoming a reality and that is high by international standards.

Meanwhile Chief Executive of AIB Eugene Sheehy has said that he regrets some of the lending decisions that his bank made in recent years and that the company could have made better decisions.

Mr Sheehy said that AIB was very grateful to the Government for its support which, he said, was critical at this time.

Notice a trend?

They keep re-evaluating every quarter or so their exposure to bad developer loans. I've lost count of how many times they have had to re-evaluate. Their share prices plummeted for a reason and the bad loans are the major reason.

Impaired loans jumped from 3.8bn to 6bn, why would anyone believe them now on their latest estimate?

Eugene now 'regrets bad decisions' but sorry is such a hard word to say.

gurramok

Goggin now refuses to say sorry
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0212/breaking13.html?via=mr

He accepted the bank had made “mistakes” and “lending decisions in the past that are now coming home to roost”.

But he declined to apologise, saying “I am not so sure it comes to an apology as such. I do regret some of our decisions. I have to balance that with lots and lots of very good decisions that we have made.

“And I suppose that if I have a regret, my regret is that I didn’t see this coming and perhaps the lessons of economics were forgotten. Economics ultimately are cyclical," Mr Goggin said.

Ah yes, good excuse Goggin. :rolleyes:

stepbar

gurramok wrote: »

Ah now, where is it defined that 'Reckless is lending to those who have no income'?

I tried googling but cannot find what you are saying but a zillion articles giving out about reckless bank lending.:D
Only the US ones talk about Ninja(no income, no job applicants) but another zilllion European articles still say European banks which were not involved in Ninja were engaged in 'reckless lending' on their own territories.

Can you clarify?

What would you like me to clarify? That I think it's wreckless to lend to a person who has no income. Clarified. I'm not defining it.

jmayo wrote: »

As our banking buddy stepbar would say "there was nothing illegal", and why should they bother about ethics. Sure it's all a big laugh.

Ethics! Good ould Sean Fitz must have decided to hop down to the safe one morning and bring up 87mil. Not very ethical I guess. O wait, he actually applied for a few loans to buy a few office blocks and stuff like that :eek: FFS he moved money over to INBS and back. He didn't defraud the company, he hasn't defaulted as of yet on the loans or anything of the sort. Sloppy (and in hindsight unnecessary), but not illegal. There is NO law stating that you can't move lending from one institute to another and as well as that no company law to my knowledge which states such actions are illegal.

Get over it.

And if you think SF having 87 mil in loans severly distorted the Anglo share price from 2000 (as you previously said), then you are seriously deluded.


People like that make my blood boil.
Any sane investor now will not go near an Irish company never mind and Irish bank.
Maybe it is time for a bit of mob rule in this country.


I'm glad, because you're making me fairly fcukin angry as it is.....

"Time for a bit of mob rule", eh? :rolleyes: FFS.

Gurramok, these banking posters just see us as a means to getting better returns and bonuses. Sure if they have to bend a few rules, there is nothing illegal mind since our laws are stacked in their favour and even then the regulators enforcing them are in the old boys club.

Christ, I'd love to show you a credit paper or a mortgage application. I dare you to find anything "illegal" in it. Cop yourself on. There are always some exceptions to credit policy that are accessed on a case by case basis. It certainly is not something that is not done on a flippant basis.

And then ask yourself how can a bank afford to pay you 5% on your savings? Because they take a loss on it. All because "the customer" wants that little bit more and aren't willing to pay for it.

You can't have it both ways. The banks are the biggest bastards if they don't lend but yet are still the biggest bastards if they do and charge a fair rate (to reflect the risk) for it.



Look at Dublin Docklands Authority, who became property speculators partially funded by the bank who had directors on the boards of both.
Is the DDDA not a quango setup by the government?
Who said they could go off and start speculating on property ?

The DDDA has a remit to regenerate the docklands area. It is only right that they have a stake in the future direction of the general area. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. The Glass bottle site was put out to tender and the DDDA (along with Bernard McNamara) won. They paid a market price (at the time) for a prime piece of property. Unfortunatly, the same property is worth less than what they paid for it. FFS it happens with shares every day.

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