Ireland's credit rating may be cut to junk by Moody's Investors Service after Portugal yesterday lost its investment grade rating, analysts said Wednesday, the Irish Times reported. Moody's, which slashed Portugal four notches yesterday to Ba2 from Baa1, in April lowered Ireland's credit rating to the lowest investment grade Baa3 and left country's outlook on negative. The ratings company cut Portugal's rating in part because the nation may not be able to return to debt markets in the second half of 2013.

The Central Bank is planning to review how banks set pay for executives and staff in the final three months of the year, according to a first annual update of its strategy for banking supervision, the Irish Times reported. A decision will also be taken by the end of September on whether to introduce credit limits to prevent the banks repeating the mistakes of the past by lending too heavily into any one sector. The Central Bank plans to publish details on the limits by the end of the third quarter and introduce them by the end of the year.

Businessman Seán Quinn and his family may challenge the jurisdiction of the Irish courts to hear a legal action by Anglo Irish Bank aimed at preventing the family transferring assets from Swedish companies behind the family’s properties in several countries, the Irish Times reported. Anglo, owed €2.8 billion by Quinn interests, claims the Quinn family set up a “mirror corporate structure”, the Cranaghan Foundation, in a “systematic attempt” to transfer assets to “mirror” Quinn companies for the benefit of the family, including Mr Quinn’s children and grandchildren.

Irish Life & Permanent will be effectively nationalised with the injection of up to €3.8 billion in State funds by the end of next month to meet the Central Bank’s capital bill, the company has said, the Irish Times reported. The company told shareholders in a circular published yesterday it proposed issuing up to €3.4 billion in ordinary shares to the Minister for Finance and a further €400 million in contingent capital, leaving the State with a shareholding of more than 99 per cent.

Bank of Ireland reduced the maximum stake the Government might take in the lender to 69 per cent after a majority of subordinated bondholders took up shares in a debt-for-equity-or-cash offer, the Irish Times reported. AIB, meanwhile, said it expected the State’s stake in the bank to “increase substantially” from 93 per cent, further diluting the investments of shareholders. New shares were likely to be issued to the State at “a very significant discount” to the current share price and talks with the Government are expected to be finalised next week, the bank said.

The family of Seán Quinn have moved to protect their international property empire from Anglo Irish Bank by issuing new shares in seven subsidiaries in Sweden to a company controlled by them, the Irish Times reported. Seven subsidiaries of Quinn Investments Sweden, the holding company behind the family’s properties in Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and India, have issued new shares to a company called Indian Trust AB, which they also control.

The Quinn family’s Swedish company is “hopelessly insolvent” and has no possibility of repaying massive loans owed to Anglo Irish Bank, lawyers for the bank told a Swedish court yesterday, the Irish Times reported. Quinn Investments Sweden has no more than 30,000 Swedish Krona (€3,277) in its coffers and lacks the assets to cover the 16 billion SEK (€1.8 billion) owed to the bank, Anglo’s lawyers said. Anglo wants a bankruptcy receiver appointed to Quinn Investments, the holding company for the family’s international properties in Russia, Sweden, Britain, Turkey and Ukraine.

Ireland’s “unilateral” bank guarantee of September 2008 was the trigger for subsequent EU-level actions to preserve Continent-wide financial stability, according to Joaquin Almunia, EU commissioner for competition, the Irish Times reported. Speaking to an audience of bankers in Dublin yesterday, the Spaniard repeated criticisms he made earlier in the week of the guarantee. Among other things, Mr Almunia said that it had limited the “margin for manoeuvre to seek burden-sharing from senior bondholders”.

Europe’s competition commissioner has declared Ireland’s banking guarantee was a mistake whose sweeping scope served to concentrate losses on taxpayers, the Irish Times reported. Joaquín Almunia told The Irish Times that the intervention in September 2008 resulted in citizens having to assume responsibility for losses that would have been “better distributed” in the absence of an unlimited guarantee.

Irish high net-worth individuals who invested £92 million in the Quinlan Private-led purchase of a portfolio of almost 50 Marriott hotels in the UK in 2007 have seen their investment wiped out, after a receiver was appointed to the portfolio of hotels, the Irish Times reported. Royal Bank of Scotland has appointed Ernst & Young as receiver to over 42 Marriott hotels in one of the largest ever corporate restructurings of the hotel sector.