Sale of insurer was put in jeopardy

THE sale of Quinn Insurance Ltd to the Liberty Mutual/Anglo Irish Bank joint venture was put in jeopardy as a result of under-reporting of reserves by QIL employees, the High Court heard yesterday.

The sale was completed in late October/early November. As a result, all of QIL businesses in the Republic, except healthcare, transferred to US insurer Liberty Mutual.

Yesterday, Bernard Dunleavy, for Michael McAteer and Paul McCann, the joint administrators of QIL, who were appointed by the Financial Regulator in April 2010, informed Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns his clients discovered last October that QIL’s reserves had been under-reported.