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“NAMA boss works 75 hour week” claim.

May 23, 2011 by namawinelake

This snippet would probably have been more suited to the almost weekly weekend tongue-in-cheek entry on here; the Sunday Business Post yesterday reported on the working week of the NAMA CEO, Brendan McDonagh  and told us that he “focuses on jobs” by spending under 5% of his working day conducting interviews. The article reminds us that NAMA itself is a relatively tiny agency in the context of volume of loans that it manages – €72.3bn according to the article, but NAMA is slightly schizophrenic in its quantification of loans, it’s €31bn when talking about recoveries and acquisition price and the higher nominal figure when advertising the amount of work being done by the agency. Even with an approved headcount of 150, of which 122 have already been recruited, it is hard to see how it won’t struggle to manage its portfolio. And if FG deliver on its commitment to hive most of NAMA’s assets off to 3-4 asset management companies, then presumably all this interviewing is a little in vain anyway.

But what might surprise some was the claim in the article that Brendan works “an average working week of 70 to 75 hours”. Working over 11 hours per day on a long term basis seems to be accepted as giving rise to health risks, particularly heart attacks, irritable bowel disease, headaches, and muscle and back pain. It doesn’t tend to make for a happy home life either, and Brendan is married with children. It reduces the amount of exercise you take and can encourage unhealthy eating. It can cause psychological problems with cold sweats, panic attacks, interrupted sleep and depression.

There are some who claim that Brendan gets well-rewarded for his efforts; there’s a basic salary of €430,000, an annual bonus of up to 60% of that, and what is reported to be a generous pension provision. There is no doubting that the agency has gotten off to a difficult start : last year it apparently failed to reach its objectives and lost €0.7bn after taking a provisional €1bn write-down on the value of its loans. It is unclear, one year after completing the transfer of the first tranche of loans, if any developer has signed the three documents which comprise an agreement with NAMA, namely memorandum of understanding, heads of terms and final agreement. There has been precious little reporting on the €3.3bn of sales which NAMA has approved, but the apparent lack of global asset management experience at NAMA’s top table does not inspire great confidence.

BlackRock boss, 58-year old Larry Fink manages trillions and gets into the office at 5.45am each day, we don’t know how many hours a day he works but the betting would be that he doesn’t reach for the hat and coat to go home at 12 midday. Larry’s salary would be expected to be a multiple of Brendan’s (UPDATE: 26th May, 2011. USD $23.8m or €20.7m at current rates  in 2010) and Larry doesn’t have to balance all sorts of social, political and economic demands and ultimately he knows that he must please his stockholders. Having a stimulating job and being well-rewarded would tend to tamp down the risks of working over 11 hours a day but still, running NAMA cannot be an easy job and there’s unlikely to be a huge pool of support to draw on. So that claim of a 75 hour week might usefully prompt NAMA’s political masters to ensure their star employee is being adequately supported.

UPDATE: 3rd January, 2011. It is reported in the Irish Times that the NAMA CEO has agreed to waive 15% of his salary in 2012, the €430,000 annual salary therefore reducing to €365,500 for 2012. Presumably the salary will be restored at its original level in 2013 if economic conditions and NAMA’s profitability improve. It is also reported that the NAMA CEO has waived his bonus of up to 60% of salary for 2011.  The NTMA CEO John Corrigan has made a similar gesture.

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Posted in NAMA, Politics | 8 Comments

8 Responses

  1. on May 23, 2011 at 3:23 pm yoganmahew

    Funny, the carer who looks after a relative of mine does a 16 hour day, five days a week with the family doing the other 32 hours over the weekend. All for 10 euro an hour (or zero in the case of the family).

    While Mr. McDonagh might have to have to pick up metaphorical piles of poo, I doubt he has to deal with literal ones.

    Still, there are plenty of sick and elderly people and plenty to look after them; there’s only one Nama and one possible chief…


  2. on May 23, 2011 at 5:25 pm who_shot_the_tiger

    “Working over 11 hours per day on a long term basis seems to be accepted as giving rise to health risks, particularly heart attacks, irritable bowel disease, headaches, and muscle and back pain. It doesn’t tend to make for a happy home life either. It reduces the amount of exercise you take and can encourage unhealthy eating. It can cause psychological problems with cold sweats, panic attacks, interrupted sleep and depression.”

    Who’s been talking about me?


  3. on May 24, 2011 at 9:55 am ObsessiveMathsFreak

    Jaw Jaw! We’ve heard it all before from the high flying bankers and financiers who worked themselves to the bone for 16 hours a day in their diligent efforts to run their institutions into the ground for bonuses galore, all of this ultimately paid for by the taxpayer.

    There are some who claim that Brendan gets well-rewarded for his efforts; there’s a basic salary of €430,000, an annual bonus of up to 60% of that, and what is reported to be a generous pension provision.

    I am suddenly reminded of the previous(current?) pension scheme for the Gardai which linked the size of their pensions to their salaries in their final three years. This lead to a phenomenon where Guards approaching retirement would work tremendous overtime as their retirement approached(An 11 hour day would not be unheard of), reaping the benefit of an increased pension as a result. I wonder if McDonagh is on a similar scheme?

    Pity the days of Sean Lemass I believe it was, who always left his office, promptly at 5 O’Clock, regardless of whether business was being conducted or not.


  4. on May 25, 2011 at 9:42 am laura

    While NAMA has failed to reach its stated objectives, could it be argued (as I would, anyway) that its true objectives are not the same and therefore it is inevitable that it will not now, and never will meet any of the stated objectives?

    So what then are NAMA’s true objectives?


    • on May 25, 2011 at 10:39 am namawinelake

      @Laura, it’s probably not the answer you’re looking for, but the NAMA Act sets out NAMA’s objectives at section 2. They’re not in a SMART (specified, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely) format. NAMA also sets out objectives in an annual statement but again they’re not in a SMART format. Is NAMA too big and complex to be constrained by the pettiness of SMART objectives? Not in my humble opinion.

      NAMA Act (section 2) http://www.attorneygeneral.ie/eAct/2009/a3409.pdf
      NAMA Annual statement including “objectives” http://www.nama.ie/Publications/2010/Section53AnnualStatement2011.pdf


  5. on May 28, 2011 at 9:12 am Banama Republic

    St Brendan waived his possible €250,000 bonus last year due to the ‘prevailing difficulties in the wider economy’. Nothing at all to do with the fact that NAMA lost €1bn and has failed to sign up one developer to all 3 documents required for business plan approval. Where is the accountability? In the next set of results will we get a report into the functioning of NAMA from the C&AG?


    • on May 28, 2011 at 9:50 am namawinelake

      @BR, you’re presumably referring to the story reported in today’s Irish Times (link below) that a number of staff in the NTMA including John Corrigan, the NTMA CEO, Brendan McDonagh, the CEO of NAMA and Brian Murphy, the CEO of the National Development Finance Agency as well as other un-named staff, have all waived their 2010 bonuses “in the context of the broader economic challenges facing the country”. And on the face of it, that is a major sacrifice by the individuals concerned as the contracts allowed bonuses of some 60-80% of salary. Some people might criticise their base salaries (€430k in Brendan’s case and €490k in John’s case) and say that even those salaries are too high in our present straitened circumstances. Others might point to Larry Fink’s €20m annual remuneration at BlackRock in 2010 reported during the week and say these NTMA folks are underpaid.

      I wonder though what “waive” means. Does it mean “deferred”? And I wonder what happened to bonuses in 2009?

      http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/0528/1224297948801.html

      UPDATE: NAMA spokesman has confirmed that this is the first time that bonuses have been waived, from which we can deduce that bonuses were paid for 2009, though John Corrigan only took over as CEO of the NTMA in 2010. Also “waived” does NOT mean “deferred”, so unless there’s some weasel set of manouervres, these waivers are permanent.


  6. on May 28, 2011 at 1:00 pm Hume

    “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE !”

    All that money for what ?.. to manage what ? Why can’t they manage Hume Street Hospital, the loan of which is in NAMA?

    The roof on Hume Street Hospital – a “protected structure” – will only cost €60,000 to fix. A temporary bit of plastic would cost a few thousand Euro and would prevent perhaps a €1,000,000 damage to the interior.

    The rain has been pouring in over the past three months – NAMA have the power to enter and protect an asset.

    Sorry If I am hijacking this thread, but when I see those salaries I just feel sick. Just pucking SICK !



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