Institutional investors back ‘crony’ bankers

IT was interesting recently to see “institutional” investors backing the current boards of both AIB and Irish Life and Permanent.

Is cronyism still continuing in the financial sector?

These are the same institutional investors who put savings and pensions into these same banks, now down in value by more than 90%.

These are the same investors who never questioned the policies of the banks over the past five to seven years because of the large paper profits the banks were earning. In fact they would have been putting the banks under a lot of pressure, directly or indirectly, to increase profits year on year.

To our horror we now know these large paper profits were false and illusionary for all banks. Of course these false profits increased the value of our pension and savings funds for a time, again only an illusion, but I am certain the commissions/bonuses the fund managers received were not a illusion.

These investors, in my opinion, are an integral part of the cronyism that has existed in Irish business life for quite some time, and last week provided further evidence of this.

Finally, two questions:

1. Why are these institutional investors backing failed bank boards?

2. Have they returned their management fees/commission/bonuses for 2008 for their abject failure to protect the savings/pensions of thousands of Irish citizens?

Seán Murphy

West Avenue

Carrignacurra

Carrigaline

Co Cork