Richard Curran, brother of Noel Curran, director general of RTE, an organization which made a €70m loss in 2011 (deficit of €17m and loss on pension fund of €50m) and which is reportedly set to declare a deficit alone of €50m in 2012, on Monday this week fronted an hour long programme on the basket case formerly known as Irish Nationwide Building Society (INBS), in which goateed, hat-wearing, €1m bonus-keeping Michael Fingleton was the CEO. The programme is available via the RTE Player here.
I should start out by saying that there is much sympathy on here for Michael Fingleton. Why?
If Paul Coulson had failed to sell the Irish Glass Bottle site in Ringsend for €412m in 2006, where would Paul be today? Well, today, having sold the 25-acre dump for €412m, he is in fact one of Ireland’s richest men, having gone on an acquisition spree post-2006 which most recently included the purchase of the US operation of global packaging company, Saint Gobain, for USD 1.7bn. Meanwhile NAMA has had receivers appointed to the Glass Bottle site and today, is struggling to rent it for €750,000 per annum. So Paul is “Jack the Lad”, lucky to have sold when he did, and doubtless a talented businessman to boot.
Michael Fingleton was on the same track as Paul, but unfortunately was in a train behind. In 2007, Michael did in fact try to sell INBS and had gotten as far as a €1bn bid from Icelandic bank, Landsbanki, when the global financial crisis began, first caused by problems with exposure to sub-prime mortgage lending in the United States. I wonder does Michael today obsess with “what if”. Because if the sale had completed at the €1bn level, Michael would be “Jack the Lad”, hailed as a business titan, and probably one of Ireland’s richest men.
But it was not to be, and Michael must these days put up with being door-stepped by RTE’s David Murphy and must feel harassed at the constant blame disproportionately directed at him. To listen to the news, you would think that Michael personally stole his €1m bonus in 2009, but that was approved by the board operating under the auspices of then-finance minister Brian Lenihan. Ditto goes for the expenses, the nights at the Dorchester in London, the presents to Gerry Gannon and others, who were amongst the bank’s biggest clients, generating 10s of millions of euros in interest each year (until the crash).
Maybe RTE should do a special on a certain national broadcaster, one which is racking up €50m annual losses whilst continuing to pay its staff salaries of over €500,000? And unlike INBS which falls into the realm of archeology at this stage, that certain national broadcaster is a financial disaster right NOW.
Special mention should go to Tom Lyons – pictured above – of the Sunday Independent who contributed heavily to the programme and who will be bringing out his own book on INBS in the Spring. Well done to him on his research and for making the INBS story accessible, though there was some amusement as Tom’s voice became highly pitched as he described the worst excesses of lending at INBS. Probably, only dogs caught everything he was saying, and perhaps for our blood pressure, it is better so.
Probably of most interest to the audience on here will be the Top 30 borrowers who in December 2006 amounted to €5bn of loans in INBS which then had loans of about €10bn total. The Top 30 were listed on the RTE programme and there has been an attempt on here to match companies to individuals – note that the individuals in the right-most column were NOT named by RTE. Some companies weren’t found which might mean they were not registered in Ireland or the UK, and many developers used companies incorporated in jurisdictions like Luxembourg, Delaware, British Virgin Islands, Gibraltar etc. The Top borrower was actually Stephen Conway who is connected to Galliard and Safehaven Limited which together had €411m of loans at the end of 2012, practically all in the UK, one would imagine.
NAMA Wine Lake 
Ouch. A Liam Fayesque TV review here. I assume you are joking about having any sympathy for Fingleton though. Surely….
The culture of impunity is alive and well when this documentary chooses not to name members of the Oireachtas who can be represented to have had a conflict of interest in exercising their parliamentary and government responsibilities for oversight and regulation of the financial sector including INBS because they are known to have been in receipt of loans from Mr Fingleton.
I thought all in all it was a fairly dull documentary with nothing new revealed. So Fingleton spent €100,000 on corporate gifts, at least he bought some good drink, remind me how much Anglo spent on golf balls and umbrellas?! Did anyone else notice the anti-semitic undertone when Lyons was discussing the UK borrowers? He actually says “families with names like Rosenberg and Landesberg”. Good to see that kind of thing on the national broadcaster….
@BR, no didn’t notice any anti-semitic undertones, and I thought the point was reasonably well made that much of the INBS lending went to non-Irish borrowers. Or is that xenophobic?
This is where I disagree. Both were on the same track, the same train even, and still are. The only difference is that Paul Coulson is in first class, and Fingleton has been shifted down to coach.
But this is a train which was hurtling out of control, and which has torn up all the track behind it. The rest of us are all paying for this bullet-train from hell and the lifestyles of those aboard it, even as the financial sonic booms rip our lives apart. This is a train which deserves to stopped, and the passengers barred from transit forevermore.
I don’t agree that Mr. Coulson or indeed any Irish property magnate was lucky, or a talented businessman, or worthy of admiration of any kind. I believe all the developers, buyers, sellers, and associated agents were reckless gamblers, adding little values, who rolled their dice on the backs of the public. They may object to this characterisation, but it was part of their responsibility to society to cry stop when things got out of hand in 2002/2003. They didn’t, and that’s why they stopped being businessmen and instead became gamblers.
Irish property during the boom wasn’t a business, an economy, an industry, or anything worthy of admiration. It was a reckless, feckless casino and everyone who punted inside of it should be ashamed of themselves. And no-one should look back on those irresponsible days in admiration or sympathy for anyone concerned.
Apart from the public who have to pay for the mess that is.
On this logic, if someone had sold off (or proposed to sell off..) RTE in 2006, they would deserve our admiration as well…
I assume the comment that ‘there is much sympathy on here for Fingleton’ is a tongue-in-cheek,throwaway remark.
The Ernst and Young report referred to by the programme appeared to reveal levels of regulatory and corporate governance misbehaviour,not by any means exclusive to INBS by any means,beyond comprehension.
‘Sympathy’ for Fingers and his ilk at elite levels across all spectrums of irish society is in short supply I would have thought – and I would include the likes of E and Y in that….
Bizarro.
RTE make a programme about a failed financial institution, INBS. INBS apparently (I haven’t checked the precise figure) was insolvent to the tune of €5 billion plus, and you appear more interested in swiping at the programme-maker and Paul Coulson, who has no connection to the story.
You then paint the “onlie-begetter” of the catastrophe as worthy of sympathy because he nearly ” got out in time”. As if whoever had bought INBS would have been more sympathetic ! On the evidence of the programme, due diligence would have “spooked” anyone enough to stay well away.
Then there is this:
“To listen to the news, you would think that Michael personally stole his €1m bonus in 2009, but that was approved by the board operating under the auspices of then-finance minister Brian Lenihan.”
Anyone new to this would understand from the above that the INBS board was the creature/puppet of the Minister, when the truth is that, while the directors were not all useless, they were all appointed by Mr Fingleton. How they approved a bonus of €1 million to the man who brought the society “over the cliff edge” is something which I trust they are going to have to justify in court. (Stay tuned, as they say).
Do you really believe that Brian Lenihan in any sense was responsible for that extraordinary bonus ?
@NWL
Have to agree with OMF and question why you have sympathy for Fingleton. He and most of the rest of the industry were ‘rouge’ for years. The complete lack of proper accountability and oversight in INBS cost many of the societies members dearly. Save any sympathy for them. I agree with your condemnation of RTE however
@Eamonn, no, it is not tongue-in-cheek above to express sympathy towards Michael Fingleton. The old media might have created a brand for blame in the financial crisis. So we have “Seanie” and “Fingers”, we have occasional doorstepping of both, when taken off guard by aggressive questioning, they come across as shady and guilty.
But, if INBS was sold in 2007, and remember ABN Ambro was sold at the same time to RBS, and that was a disaster for RBS, but a gift for the owners of ABN; if INBS was sold for €1bn and the building society members got really rich, when the crash came, why would the Govt guarantee an Icelandic bank? So shareholders would have been protected, depositors would have been protected, borrowers would have been unaffected one way or the other, and Michael Fingleton would have been a (luckily-timed) hero.
Do you think nights at the Dorchester were unique to Michael? Or that banks and businesses generally don’t provide gifts to key customers?
As for the regulatory and loan documentation failures, what were the Regulator and auditors doing?
No, Michael Fingleton is not blameless, but a brand has been created which disproportionately blames him for the collapse. He is to blame, but he is one in a vast gallery.