“NAMA boss works 75 hour week” claim.

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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