Ireland

A former Barclays banker who is among the new shareholders in the National Asset Management Agency’s ownership company was involved in a scheme to remove toxic assets from Barclay’s books that a top UK regulator described as “pushing the envelope too far”, the Irish Times reported. Nama yesterday said Irish Life had sold its 17 per cent stake in the special purpose vehicle that owns the loans agency to London company Walbrook Capital. One of the firms’s three founders is Australian lawyer Michael Keeley, who worked for the structured credit division of UK bank Barclays.

Banks must face up to the issue of restructuring rather than just deferring problem SME loans, the deputy governor of the Central Bank said yesterday, the Irish Times reported. Matthew Elderfield also warned an audience of compliance officers that the Central Bank will conduct a third series of stress tests on Irish banks over the next year to satisfy itself that they were now sufficiently capitalised for the medium term.

The Central Bank has strongly criticised banks for their slow progress in tackling the mortgage crisis, saying the extent of their efforts to fix the problems showed that “wait and see” had become the strategy of choice for lenders, the Irish Times reported. In a strongly worded speech to a conference of bankers, the Central Bank’s head of banking regulation Fiona Muldoon said that the banks were behaving like teenagers in responding to its requests to deal with the problem with mortgages.

Family members of bankrupt businessman Seán Quinn’s family have claimed a receiver appointed over their personal assets by the former Anglo Irish Bank is not independent but biased towards the bank on grounds including that several of his staff worked at a senior level for the bank before and since its nationalisation, the Irish Timesreported.

Poland's state road operator has been hit with a 1.2 billion zloty ($385 million) compensation claim by Irish builder SRB Civil Engineering, the latest fallout from a troubled construction spree ahead of the Euro 2012 soccer tournament, Reuters reported. SRB said it was forced to walk away from a contract to build stretches of a key Polish highway because of failures by roads operator GDDKiA and wants to be compensated for losses it said it incurred. But GDDKiA said it was the contractor who was at fault and that it had to withdraw from the contract, not the other way round.

Aer Lingus is seeking pay restraint for a four-year period from staff in return for providing a once-off financial contribution to help address the substantial deficit that exists in a pension scheme for its general workers, the Irish Times reported. It also warned that current workers and deferred members of the scheme, which it operates jointly with the Dublin Airport Authority, would have received just 4 per cent of their entitlement had it been wound up on the basis of the €748 million deficit in the scheme that existed on May 31st.

Senior executives from Spain’s second-biggest bank, BBVA, met National Asset Management Agency officials yesterday as the Spanish authorities announced further details of a “bad bank” to purge toxic loans from its lenders, the Irish Times reported. Spanish bankers and government officials have been studying the Irish “bad bank” model as Madrid sets up a vehicle to acquire toxic real-estate loans and repossessed properties from the banks.

The Irish division of the troubled JJB Sports chain is on the block following the appointment of a provisional liquidator Monday, the Irish Times reported. In Britain, JJB’s rival, Sports Direct, is buying 20 of its stores, the brand and website from administrators KPMG, which the company appointed after failing to find a buyer. Yesterday, the High Court appointed Kieran Wallace of KPMG’s Dublin office as provisional liquidator to JJB Sports in Ireland following a petition from the company’s directors.

Family members of bankrupt businessman Seán Quinn are to seek to remove a receiver appointed over their personal assets and his lawyers amid claims over a possible conflict of interest, the Irish Times reported. The Commercial Court will hear an application from seven members of Mr Quinn’s family on October 9th to have the receiver, Declan Taite of accountancy firm RSM Farrell Grant Sparks, and his solicitors Arthur Cox discharged.

The Irish economy was stagnant in the second quarter of the year, as consumers continued to cut back on spending and capital investment slumped, the Irish Times reported. The figures were a further blow to hopes for economic growth, coming a day after it was revealed the unemployment rate has risen to 14.8 per cent. The Central Statistic Office said preliminary estimates for the three-month period showed gross domestic product was €39.7 billion, unchanged from the previous quarter.