Directors quit Anglo ahead of takeover

FIVE non-executive directors announced their resignation from the board of Anglo Irish Bank yesterday, ahead of the Government’s expected formal takeover of the lender later this week.

The bank said Gary McGann, Ned Sullivan, Michael Jacob, Anne Heraty and Noël Harwerth, all on the podium for last Friday’s EGM, were leaving the board.

The first new appointments were also announced last night with recently appointed chairman Donal O’Connor and the two ‘public interest’ board members put forward by the Government as part of its state guarantee scheme — Alan Dukes and Frank Daly — being asked to stay on.

Former Bank of Ireland chief executive Maurice Keane is due to join as a non-executive director. More appointments are expected in due course.

Of the departed, Mr Jacob — who is also chairman of Slaney Foods — and Mr McGann, chief executive of paper and packaging group, Smurfit Kappa and chairman of the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA), were also members of Anglo’s internal audit committee.

This committee, along with external auditors Ernst & Young, came under fire from irate shareholders at last week’s meeting for not recognising the transfer between banks of huge undiscovered loans over an eight-year period belonging to former chairman Sean Fitzpatrick.

It is known that the current total value of directors’ loans outstanding, including those to board members who left the company last year, amount to €179 million. Some €84m relates to Mr Fitzpatrick, while €23m relates to certain other members of the board, as of last Friday.

It is not known how much loans relate specifically, to the five directors who left Anglo last year: former chief executive, David Drumm; Lar Bradshaw; Fintan Drury; Tom Browne and former chief risk officer and finance director Willie McAteer.

Beyond that the bank has so far refused to break down full details of individual loans to any of the directors. These are likely however, to be fully detailed in Anglo’s annual report — for its financial year to the end of last September.

This document was originally due to be published before Christmas, but was postponed until this month to include details of the Government’s previous plan to invest €1.5bn in the bank for a 75% stake. Since that plan has been replaced with the full nationalisation move, it is now unlikely that Anglo’s last annual report as a publicly-quoted company will see the light of day until some time next month, at least.