Prime Time Investigates the banking system and regulation tonight


I would be very interested to find out who the journalists were who benefitted from this cosy relationship. I wonder if they work in the property sections??
 
well if Prime Time were able to name the policiticans last night,why did'nt they also name the sports stars and journalists that they referred to....
 
Our journalists unfortunately descended to a collection of corporate lackeys participating in the collective delusion accurately described as groupthink by Morgan Kelly in the Primetime episode.

The 'property bubble ostrich' moderation policy adopted by this site was a shining example of that groupthink in action.
 

It was April 2003. I will see if I can find the text of the submission I made to members.

We had three motions that year

Resolutions 1 deals with demutualisation and with the carrying out of a diligence report.
Resolution 2 calls for a vote of no confidence in managing director, Michael Fingleton.
Resolutions 3 calls for the introduction of a standard variable rate and payback of exorbitant penalty fines imposed on borrowers who fell behind in their loan repayments.



My main issue has always been the manner in which he treated people in arrears - 20% penalty interest, miscalculation of arrears, not passing on interest rate cuts. I have often spoken about the way he treated the Irish Nationwide as his own personal fiefdom. Not sure if this featured at the time. He was also threatened with jail for not following a judge's order. He refused to direct the Isle of Man(?) branch to cooperate with one of the Tribunals.



The Financial Regulator found that the manner in which the Irish Nationwide conducted the ballot on these motions was "in cotravention of the legislation" But other than naming and shaming the Society 18 months after I made a complaint, they took no action.



My main concern was with small borrowers. I was not aware of reckless lending by the Irish Nationwide.
 

I think you've touched on a very important point here, basically, as long as everyone was making money, the vast majority of people didn't give a damm what was going on in Irish banking, because the value of their assets were going up, their taxes were falling and the national infrastructure was being improved.

To me, a number of key things happened in Irish banking over the last number of years. Firstly was the move towards short term sales targets within the banks, away from looking at the customer as a long term investment. Whether or not a mortgage or investment product suited an individual in the long term didn't matter, it all became about making this months/quarters sales targets, and never mind the quality. I thought the ACC guy made a valid point when he spoke about the office car park being full of Mondeos one years and BMWs the next. Bankers traditionally should have managed risk with sales and customer service, that no longer mattered, traditional bankers were replaced by sales people

Secondly, regualtion was (and still is ) a joke, I know people who worked in Reg Risk in some of the Irish banks, as one of them put it to me, all you had to do was answer the questions you were asked, volunteer nothing else, they (the Regulator) didn't really know what they were talking about anyway. The same applied to Corporate Governance, what happened with the DDA and the Irish Glass bottle site is like something out of a tin pot 3rd world country, not a "sophisticated" 1st world economy

Incidentally, for all those people who got loans without Irish Nationwide following due diligence and money laundering processes, I have to wonder if there is a case for mis-selling there?
 
I know it's a very dangerous thing for the state to take action which contravenes the law, but as I watched this program last night I believe it's time that regardless of the legalities that the pensions, assets etc. are seized from these people. A good place to start would be the pensions of Michael Fingleton (€28m) and Sean Fitzpatrick (€25m).
 
Sunny said:
Everyone knew what was going on in Irish Nationwide and yet so few people seemed to be willing to do anything about it.
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From the outside .. I would assume that many people were just willing on Fingleton to float Nationwide so that they could cash in on their windfalls ?
 
TarfHead said:
I would assume that many people were just willing on Fingleton to float Nationwide so that they could cash in on their windfalls ?
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Indeed they were. What they failed to notice was that Fingleton never had any intention of floating, because this would have meant losing control over his personal fiefdom.
 
[broken link removed]


Is this what the programme alleged? Loans for many people including 4 named FF politicians were fast-tracked. But I thought that the programme went out of its way to say that there was no evidence of the loans being on favourable terms? Anecdotally, Fingleton is reputed to have never given anyone a good deal.

The only issue raised is that they were fast-tracked as far as I can see.

I would guess that some FG TDs have mortgages with the Irish Nationwide. Maybe even a Labour TD or Senator has a mortgage with the Irish Nationwide.

I presume that the majority of TDs and Senators have mortgages. If we discovered that 10 Labour TDs had their mortgages with the EBS, would we be raising such a fuss?

Having said all that, I still don't understand why the Financial Regulator did not put the boot into Michael Fingleton and the Irish Nationwide. I had always wondered if it was due to their political connections. But I think it's more likely due to a general tendency of the Financial Regulator not to enforce.
 
'Supermarket banking' I believe the term is.
 
Thought the new head of the Central Bank was interesting. Certainly said the right things and sounded tough so fingers crossed.

I have to say though, I do think it is pretty disgusting the way these guys sail off into the sunset and leave everyone else to pick up the pieces. I don't begrudge anyone earning a high salary but the one thing that really bugs me is lack of accountability when things go wrong. Walking off into retirement with huge pensions is not taking responsibility.
 
Just on the point of identification i thought it was a legal requirement to provided the necessary documentation. The fact that you were well known had no relevance. I am a retired bank manager with a bank account. when sometime ago i approached the bank where i previously worked to open an annother account i had to come home to get the required documents.
 

God love him, Brendan. Seriously, I find it worrying that a consumer advocate thinks that some laws are only for the little people. Nodding and winking has gotten us into this mess in the first place. Whether or not the paperwork is inappropriate, it's the law.
 
It appears that nothing has changed since the 1980s when banks routinely gave special treatment to prominent politicians e.g. writing off loans.

The big question is what were the banks getting in return? Banks are commerical enterprises. No business gives away favours unless they are expecting something in return which will improve the bottom line.

I've also heard that it may not just have been the fast tracking of loan applications etc. - connected individuals may have been set up with jobs in some banks.
 
+1 if this were america they'd be jailed or at least held accountable..
this country needs a complete clean out from the top down banks and gov included
 
Funny enough, the part of the programme I found striking was when Berite was questioned about an article stating that the economy was vulnerable, he laughed it off and was quite dismissive of the economist involved. He refered to him as 'I can't remember which whizzkid wrote this'.
He really came across as not wanting to face up to reality.
 
A few things struck me ;
INBS fast track application process did not take into account the alility of the applicant to pay it back (it was said that the decision to loan to CMcC or some other party made before the application was recieved). This is just crazy, and if its not wrong in current law, it should be made illegal.
If politicians were able to be named, why not the sports persons too? Fair is fair-if what happend was not wrong (fast tracking) why not name them too?
The show needed the an insider to make it stand out from other programmes on the topic. However I am curious as to what would make someone break a confidentiality agreement in such a public way.
Is this because it has been determined that the agreement was badly drafted (maybe it was also fast tracked ), or maybe the legal advice is that INBS will not be around long enough as a legal entity to enforce the agreement, or maybe RTE have decided (at licence payers expense) to underwrite any claim/judgement against her in the interest of the public record. I certainly hope the latter is not the case.
 
Wouldn't it be interesting to know if McCreevy was claiming 107% of tax relief on his 107% LTV loan; [broken link removed]
 
There should be some accountability from the banks, for giving loans/mortgages to people who could never afford them.
 
AlbacoreA said:
There should be some accountability from the banks, for giving loans/mortgages to people who could never afford them.
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Totally agree, they should share it with the people who spent €300,000 on the 1 Bed Apartments (who would probably be complaining if the banks didn't give that mortgage)
 
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