Anglo may see faster wind-down

ANGLO Irish Bank chairman, Alan Dukes has said that the complete wind down of the bank and its sister operation, the Irish Nationwide Building Society (INBS), could be completed quicker than the ten-year timeframe set by the Government.

Mr Dukes — addressing yesterday’s sitting of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform — said that progress is being made on the sale of Anglo’s US loan book and other assets.

“We’d hope to see very substantial progress on the disposal of our UK loan book within the next five years. Similarly, we’d like to see progress on the sale of the INBS mortgage book over the same timeframe; but we can’t give guarantees,” Mr Dukes said.

The sale of the bank’s US loan book is set to be concluded before the end of this year. In addition to that, the 350 further job losses, which Anglo announced earlier this year, are set to begin shortly and be completed in the first quarter of next year.

Mr Dukes added that the total cost of bailing Anglo out will come in well below initial estimates.

“We’re reasonably hopeful that the final cost of the operation will be €25 billion rather than the €29bn-€34bn range; but that’s contingent on what happens in the property markets in Ireland and the UK and in the general economy. We feel that we’ve brought down the final cost to the taxpayer by an appreciable amount,” he said.

Regarding the Government’s plan to try to burden-share with some of Anglo’s senior bondholders, Mr Dukes said that it was “entirely a matter for Government; in other words, we’ll do what we’re told.”

Anglo’s chief executive, Mike Aynsley, commented just last week, that such a move would be of “questionable” value.

At yesterday’s meeting, Mr Dukes said that Anglo is “working intensely” to secure some — if not all — repayment of loans and hopes to recover a substantial part of outstanding directors’ loans.

Questioned as to his views on the role of Ernst & Young as auditor — E&Y is now facing a disciplinary hearing over its Anglo work — during Anglo’s pre-nationalisation years, he pointed out that the bank’s new post-nationalisation management had replaced E&Y as auditor (with Deloitte) in 2009.

Mr Dukes was joined by INBS’ chief financial officer, John McGloughlin at yesterday’s hearing. The committee heard that renewed attempts had been made to retrieve former INBS head, Michael Fingleton’s controversial €1 million bonus payment, but to no avail.

Anglo and INBS are due to merge on October 14.