Peter Bacon appointed as adviser to NAMA

Dr. Peter Bacon, economist and author of the “Proposal for a National Asset Management Agency” in April, 2009 which examined the feasibility of NAMA, has apparently been appointed to be an adviser to NAMA. He has an extensive background in Irish state economics and is a director of Ballymore Properties, NAMA-bound Sean Mulryan’s property company.

NAMA has not confirmed the appointment but the biographical note for Peter, who is to be a speaker at the forthcoming Business and Finance  “Corporate Restructuring Summit 2010”  which will take place in September 2010 states “ He was Managing Director of Goodbody Stockbrokers for three years. Dr. Bacon is the author of the well known “Bacon Reports” into the Irish housing markets and is a Director of numerous Irish companies, including Ballymore Properties. Dr. Bacon has recently been appointed as an adviser to NAMA; the National Asset Management Agency.”

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Maureen! Have you seen the keys? Maureen! Have you seen the car?!

Such as might have been overheard if you were listening in on the domestic life of the Kelly family on Morehampton Road yesterday. ACC Bank who, according to the Irish Times, are apparently owed at least €16.9m from Paddy Kelly and his sons Simon and Christopher yesterday removed the 2003 7-series BMW that Paddy used to chauffeur Fintan O’Toole around only three weeks ago. Paddy has reportedly claimed that the car is in his wife, Maureen’s, name and Paddy is taking legal advice as his next steps. Of course there is no love lost between Paddy and ACC Bank – take a look at Paddy’s recent speech at the MacGill Summer School and you’ll see a few particularly nasty swipes by Paddy at ACC in what was generally an amiable speech. That was the speech where Paddy also potentially landed NAMA’s Head of Portfolio Management, John Mulcahy, in the doo-doo by revealing it was John Mulcahy that valued Paddy’s Burlington Plaza at €350m a few years back.

Paddy appears to be getting on with life and rebuilding his businesses particularly overseas, and as he reminded Fintan O’Toole a few weeks ago he’s faced financial hardship before and bounced back. Still, discovering that the bank has repossessed the car, lawfully or not, can’t be nice.

UPDATE: 7th August, 2010. Paddy has found his keys! And ACC Bank has returned the car to Paddy’s family, with, according to the Irish Times, an apology from the driver. As can be seen from the photograph in the Irish Times, Paddy is delighted but the absence of any visible watch on either of Paddy’s wrists may indicate Paddy is being far more careful than his seemingly innocuous character would suggest.

UPDATE: 9th August 2010. One of Paddy Kelly’s progeny, Simon, writes about the car drama in his weekly column in  Ireland’s Sunday Tribune. After exhorting mortgage holders to unite against the banks, this scion of the non-grudge-holding Kelly family suggests that the repossessed & returned BMW would be a good vehicle to survey Irish property backing ACC loans with a possible implication that ACC may be nursing large losses here or may have to use the property to redress the apparent boo-boo of repossessing property that didn’t belong to Paddy Kelly.

UPDATE: 23rd December, 2010. ACC Bank has repossessed the car again and this time it looks terminal for Paddy. The Dublin City Sheriff apparently found an interview from 2004 in the International Herald Tribune (not available online it seems) which apparently showed Paddy as the beneficial owner. It seems not to be in dispute that the car is registered to Paddy’s wife but the claim is that Paddy is the beneficial owner. The car is valued by the sheriff at €15,000 but he thinks he might get more because of its former celebrity owner.

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Anglo : “the timeline is now September as the summer holidays are here”

According to the Irish Times today, Anglo CEO, Mike Aynsley, is blaming the summer holidays for his revised estimate of when the EU will respond to the revised version of the Anglo restructuring plan which was submitted at the end of May 2010, following the lambasting that the EU gave their first effort.

As previously noted on here, it is difficult to see how Anglo can transfer the second tranche of loans to NAMA without getting a further capital injection to shore up the residual losses that will be left behind in Anglo’s books. To recap – the EU has already given approval for a cumulative injection of €14.44bn into Anglo (€4bn approval in 2009 and €10.44bn approval in 2010) and so far the government has pumped €14.3bn into Anglo and the remaining €0.14bn is unlikely to be sufficient to offset the losses on Anglo’s tranche 2 transfer to NAMA (€8bn gross loans at an estimated 55% haircut). NAMA has denied that the delay in transferring Anglo’s tranche 2 is to do with anything other than “the amount of paperwork involved in the process. A spokesman for NAMA said yesterday [19^th July, 2010] said there was no other reason for the delay”.

Unbelievably Mike Aynsley might be right about the folks in Brussels taking a break for a holiday in August – looking at the Financial Services sector decisions at the Competition Commissioner last year reveals there were 8/9 decisions in both July and September 2009 and none in August. However the fact that the Decision didn’t come before the August break probably doesn’t augur well – this was the second restructuring plan after all so Anglo, the DoF and the Commissioner should have been up to speed on the basic issues and context. And meanwhile over at NAMA, what’s happening with Anglo’s second tranche?

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