Saga set to drag on long after end of Anglo trial

It looks like the Anglo trial is all over bar the sentencing but, in reality, the saga has a long way to go before it has exhausted public interest and ceased to be in the public interest.

Q: Where’s the prince?

A: The trial was described by Patrick Whelan’s lawyers as “Hamlet without the prince” because of the absence of David Drumm, the bank’s former chief executive and architect of the Maple Ten illegal loan deal for which Whelan and his co-accused William McAteer have just been convicted. He resigned the position in December 2008 and fled to the US, where he watched from a safe distance as the bank was nationalised and the full scale of the country’s banking disaster unfolded. He’s still there.