Ireland

The government will resist attempts by any of the main players in the Irish insurance market to take over Quinn Insurance, on the grounds that such a deal would reduce market competition and result in further job losses at the company, the Sunday Business Post reported. The Quinn Group said last week it would sell the insurance business, which is in administration, in an effort to protect jobs. Both Quinn and the government are now favouring selling the business to a new entrant to the Irish insurance market.

Anglo Irish Bank may have to be wound up in the long term, but an immediate liquidation would not benefit taxpayers, according to the Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, The Irish Times reported. The final cost of bailing out the bank, the biggest casualty of the property bubble’s collapse, could run to €22 billion, but the Government has insisted that it will be kept as a going concern since the State took over the institution in January 2009. Speaking to the Dáil yesterday Mr Lenihan said he accepted that a longer-term wind down of the bank is an option that must be examined.

Ireland’s Revenue Commissioners wrote off almost €222 million in business taxes last year, mostly because companies became insolvent or ceased trading, The Irish Times reported. Issuing the authority's annual report today, chairman Josephine Feehily said Revenue had identified problems linked to a further €195 million in business tax and has entered into special instalment arrangements for repayment in 14,100 cases. She warned however that Revenue's focus remains on "timely compliance and payment of tax".

Ireland had the biggest fiscal deficit in the European Union last year – larger than both Greece and the UK - according to revised figures published on Thursday by Eurostat, the European Commission’s official statistics office, the Financial Times reported. The deficit was revised up from 11.8 per cent to 14.3 per cent of Gross Domestic Product after Eurostat ruled that the Irish government’s €4bn of aid to Anglo Irish Bank must be treated as part of current spending.

The Quinn Group today withdrew its objection to the appointment of permanent administrators of its insurance division, Finfacts reported. On March 30th, provisional administrators were appointed to take control of Quinn Insurance, which has 1.3m customers, including those who transferred from the health insurance business of the Irish unit of UK company BUPA in late 2007. The Financial Regulator had claimed that Quinn was in serious breach of regulatory rules, by providing guarantees for borrowing by other units of the Quinn Group.

Derek Hughes, the founder of bookshop chain Hughes & Hughes, has put together a group of investors in a move to reopen some of the chain’s Dublin stores, The Irish Times reported. The group went into receivership in February. However, a number of other interested parties are believed to be in negotiations with landlords over the leases of former Hughes & Hughes high-street stores. In late February, Ulster Bank moved on the Hughes & Hughes chain with the appointment of Deloitte’s David Carson as receiver.

Top Russian oil producer OAO Rosneft said a U.K. court lifted an order freezing GBP425 million ($648 million) of its assets, the latest twist in a legal battle with an affiliate of bankrupt Russian oil giant Yukos, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The freeze had been obtained last month by Netherlands-based Yukos Capital S.a.r.l., which is seeking to recover a $389 million debt Rosneft assumed when it acquired Yukos assets in 2004. Rosneft had refused to comply with an arbitration award by a Dutch court ordering it to repay the sum, plus interest and penalties.

Allied Irish Banks (AIB) and Bank of Ireland (BoI) were asked during crisis talks on the night the Government bank guarantee was introduced in late September 2008 how much they could provide in liquidity to Anglo Irish Bank, according to well-placed sources, The Irish Times reported. During emergency discussions with the Government and senior regulatory officials, both banks consulted their treasury departments shortly after talks began late on Monday, September 29th.

Barclays Bank last week appointed a receiver over assets of Marumba Properties, a Dublin company that was behind plans to revamp the Finglas Shopping Centre in north Dublin, The Post reported. Acting on foot of a 2007 charge registered against the company’s assets, the bank installed David Carson, an accountant with Deloitte, as receiver to the company. Marumba Properties was planning to develop Finglas Village, a proposed development that was to include 160 apartments and a retail development. However, construction work has yet to begin on the site.

One of Ireland's best-known architectural firms Murray Ó Laoire has gone into liquidation, with the loss of more than 120 jobs, The Irish Times reported. The company cited cumulative bad debts, the difficult market and problems in getting paid on time for the collapse of the business. Murray Ó Laoire has offices in Dublin, Limerick, Cork, Slovakia, Russia, Germany, Libya, Barbados and Abu Dhabi. The company employs 127 people, with the majority of its staff based in Ireland.