If you were to believe the Government, what unfolded on the afternoon of 6th February, 2013 was the execution of a long-planned orderly wind-down of Irish Bank Resolution Corporation where extensive resource had already been devoted to ensuring the wind-down would be smooth. We were told that the Attorney General Maire Whelan approved the IBRC Bill before the end of 2012.
I don’t believe a word of it.
It’s not just that IBRC mortgage holders are still left dangling without an account to which to pay their monthly mortgage. It’s not just the spectacle of one of our most formidable judges in the land fumbling around hearings on the basis of legislation which he hasn’t seen. Nor is it the subtle signs that the deal will be chipped away at by Europe who may demand that we sell the bonds used to swap with the promissory notes, sooner rather than later.
It’s the unverified claims received on here that law firms are withholding contracts which have been drafted over a period of weeks, because substantial legal fees are not being paid by the Special Liquidator. Might this be a reason why there is uncertainty about the sale of the Project Delta portfolio of €2bn of IBRC loans?
Indeed there have been reports that Irish law firm McCann Fitzgerald is owed a whopping €8m. For a firm with total annual revenue of about €100m, that outstanding sum of €8m, if confirmed would represent a grave loss. [UPDATE: 19th February, 2013. It is understood that the €8m reported in the press is significantly overstated] It is ironic that McCann Fitzgerald produced a briefing on the liquidation without referring to the position of unsecured creditors.
This morning’s Financial Times raises the spectre of some unsecured creditors suing IBRC for having deliberately dissipated its assets. After all, it handed over €27.7bn of promissory notes to the Central Bank of Ireland in return for bonds worth €25bn. That is apparently why most of the bank’s capital base has been wiped out, but now, unsecured creditors might get bolshie and sue IBRC and perhaps the Minister for Finance, Ireland and the Attorney General over the IBRC liquidation.
Project Red, the name given to the secret plans to liquidate IBRC, despite being the subject of intensive planning for over six months, is beginning to look raggedy with a mounting number of loose threads.
McCann Fitzgerald was asked for comment on the reported sum owing of €8m and about claims of work withheld from IBRC, but at time of writing, there has not been any response.
“After all, it handed over €27.7bn of promissory notes to the Central Bank of Ireland in return for bonds worth €25bn.”
So that is where the ‘loss’, or most of it, is! Sounds like, from that equation, that ICB benefited to the tune of almost all of that awful 3.1 billion. But ‘the 3.1 billion was not paid, and will not be paid’……….
I must try to get the time to go through the details.
These unsecured creditors took a chance that the dumb Irish citizens would continue to pony up. They miscalculated. Tough.
Looks like”Breakfast at Anglo” is over”..
@NWL
On further thoughts
“But the central bank took over the promissory notes at their face value of €25bn, while IBRC had valued the IOUs at almost €28bn by the end of June last year. The market value was arguably even higher when the liquidation legislation was passed, given the rally in Irish bonds since mid-2012.”
Is that responsible reporting by the FT or is it simply a crock of horseshit?
The market value was ‘arguably higher’. Says who. A sizable minority if not majority of Irish people, the ultimate backers of these odious P Notes, would have torn these up. They never had an open market value.
Why would the ICB give any more than the face value of the PN? On the basis that the State was willing and able to pay them up until 2031?
The article should be read as an unashamed plea or threat on behalf by powerful people to enhance their ‘unsecured’ status, at the expense of the remaining security of the most insecure of Irish citizens.
The article calls for a public get lost to these people.