Bowe apologises for tone of Anglo tapes

One of the former executives at the centre of the Anglo tapes controversy has issued a statement denying that he misled the Central Bank or was aware of any strategy to do so.

However, John Bowe, who was head of Capital Markets at Anglo, says he regrets the language and the tone he used in the phone conversation.

The tapes were released by the Irish Independent this morning suggest that Anglo deliberately misled the Central Bank as to the extent of its problems, in order to secure €7bn in emergency funding.

In the recording he is heard saying that Anglo would look for €7bn from the Central bank in emergency funding, even though it needed more.

He went on to explain that the strategy was to pull the Central Bank in and once they had written a big cheque they would have to support their money.

Tonight, Mr Bowe said the conversation took place in the days following the Lehman Bros collapse.

In that context, Anglo needed emergency funding, a bridging loan until the markets calmed down and it could look for alternative funding possibly from the ECB.

Mr Bowe said he was not a member of Anglo's executive management board at the time and was not in a position to make decisions about the Bank's capital requirements or negotiations with the Central Bank.