Poor auld Seanie, may he Rest in Peace.
Sorry for his family but now many lives have been utterly ruined because of Seanie?
I'm sure they have better things to be doing, but congratulations on being offended on their behalf 🙄
I'm only sorry for his family in that they will be forever associated with this failure of a human being.
Comparisons to the Hutches and Kinahans are embarrassing.
I once seen Seanie on a tram in Dublin. He got on at Red Cow, all flustered and sweating profusely. I didn't know him from Adam but knew he was someone of importance. His watch and shoes stood out. The suit he was wearing was a couple of days on his back and he didn't smell too good.
He sat opposite me and my ears pricked up when he was talking to someone on the phone. "They're coming for me , they're coming for me. I'm f*cked.". It was only a couple of days later when I was telling my dad about it we realized who he was. A snap for the red tops would have been worth serious money but might have also put a mark on my head.
tis a lot more complicated than that, the overall outcome of the crash maybe incalculable, it has set off complex chain reactions, in both the public and private domains, and covid borrowing is far from free, these debts to will also need to be serviced throughout their existence, unless we default of theyre forgiven
Any chance of a mention for the reckless borrowers?
'behind every bad borrower, is a bad lender'!
Lots of reactionary stuff here. Plenty of largely uninformed opinion too.
Seanie was responsible for the development and spectacular growth at Anglo, and whilst in hindsight it was unwise at best to see that business model being sustainable the reality is the rest of the banking market was hugely jealous of his success. They all tried to compete.
Sure he has to carry his share of the blame for the terrible things that happened after the economy collapsed, but it's unfair to saddle him with all the blame.
Well worth reading.
Indeed Seanie done far more damage.
"We have arrived and we ain't going anywhere"
-Seanie Fitz, December 2007
Your failure to comprehend a simple post is embarrassing.
We don't weep (well, decent people don't) for the Kinahans and Hutches of this world, just because Fitz destroyed lives while wearing a nice suit didn't make him any more deserving of our sympathy.
Pat Neary did his job exactly as the man who appointed him wanted him to - Bartholomew Patrick Ahern.
Not so much "light touch regulation" as "don't touch regulation".
...
To put 34 billion in context. We had several "austerity budgets" (including 2 in one year if I remember correctly) in the ensuing years 2009-2011.
This were widely considered to be savage, withdrawing around 5 billion each from the exchequer. We were told we needed to "tighten our belts".
All of the austerity budgets combined did not recoup enough to pay that 34 billion.
...and some still believe in this nonsense, that its good for society and the economy!
No one is asking you to weep or even sympathize. But the "Hope he died roarin" comment is nasty sh1t - Not something decent people say.
Exactly what lives did he destroy? I have huge sympathy for ordinary shareholders who were badly burnt, but its not the first and won't be the last business to boom and bust. Shareholder were destroyed in the dot-com bubble too.
Can't handle the truth?
I really, really couldn't care less whether you think I'm a decent person or not. My conscience is clear and I don't make excuses for criminal wrongdoers.
As for the second paragraph, the shareholders were only the tip of the iceberg. Some people put their life savings in bank shares - not a wise move in retrospect but bank shares had always been regarded as a totally safe investment. Hundreds of thousands borrowed irresponsibly, but many others had their lives ruined through no fault of their own - buying a home in ghost estates which would never have been built had it not been for the likes of Seanie lending to any chancer who called themselves a "developer". He was the "innovator" when it came to grossly irresponsible lending in Ireland and he bears a huge share of the responsibility for its consequences.
Exactly Anglo kicked off the huge bloating of bank balance sheets in Ireland which made the bust massively worse and massively bigger
Traditionally banks in Ireland based their loans from deposits
Anglo spear-headed the practice of issuing bonds that ended up being multiples of the deposits, hugely inflating balance sheets
This also of course fuelled the "Irish people and chancers buying houses and land from each other" bubble that burst so spectacularly.
Asset values inflated by more credit available.
"mo money, mo stamp duty" was the fool Bertie's motto so he was on the Kool-aid also
When AIB and BOI saw Anglo book high "profits" (but with the massive bust down the road paid for by the taxpayers) they said "Lads we have to get in on this act to to push up the value of our own share options"
S. Fitz and his arrogant hubris has a lot to answer for
...but this was a global process, so....
Wtf does that mean?
That's like Bertie saying that Lehman brothers had their testicles everywhere.
Anglo were responsible for starting the trend in Ireland when S F was CEO - that's a fact.
the majority of our money actually came from international financial markets, in particular French and German banks, but our own banks also played a critical role in this fcuk up
The Irish Banks issued the bonds to dole out to the Sean Dunne's and Paddy-the-five-house-buy-to-let landlord , the money didn't come in of it's own accord
That's the key point
And besides it's a myth that all of the money came from French and German banks - a fair amount of the bondholders in 2008 were actually Irish institutions like pension funds and even wealthy Irish individuals (even Seanie buying his own bank bonds!). There were a lot of German banks yes but the responsibility lies with the stupid and irresponsible lending practices of the Irish Banks first and foremost who issued them
https://www.independent.ie/business/irish/hundreds-of-wealthy-irish-burnt-in-bond-haircuts-26743764.html
How the hell is someone who bought a house in a ghost estate not at fault for their own decisions?
What crimes are you not prepared to excuse?
As far as I am aware Fitzpatrick committed no crimes.
Do you enjoy the taste of boot?
The case against Fitzpatrick for misleading auditors about his personal loans with the bank failed wholly because of investigative cock-ups
He said the most fundamental error was the manner in which the ODCE set about taking statements from witnesses. He said this involved coaching of witnesses, contamination of their statements from third parties such as solicitors for the auditors and cross-contamination of their statements between other witnesses.
Judge Aylmer also pointed to the extraordinary circumstances in which the ODCE lead investigator, Kevin O'Connell had admitted destroyed potentially relevant documentary evidence. This happened during legal argument in the first trial in May 2015 and emerged during that process.
The case failed. Correct.
That does not, however, give any indication of the verdict should it have gone ahead.
so hes not to blame for hiding billion when they were audited . yeh sure
I didn't say that it would.
It's a stain on the state that the case was cocked-up so badly though.
More incompetence.
However it's a fact that Fitzpatrick hid over €100m of personal loans that he and his family had from Anglo from appearing in the Anglo accounts by using the "bed-and-breakfast" loan warehousing deal with Irish National Building Society - facilitated by the highly dubious CEO "Fingers" Fingleton there.
More evidence of the cronyism that was as the heart of the problem in Irish financial circles.
Whether this would be deemed to be illegal is not known but obviously the only purpose of doing this was to hide it.
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