Fitch Ratings said today that Greek and Irish banks’ reliance on European Central Bank loans is out of proportion to the size of their assets, Finfacts reported. Greek banks accounted for 6.6% of the €749bn the ECB lent to financial companies by the end of 2009, though only held 1.6% of the Eurozone's banking assets, Fitch analysts wrote in a report. Irish banks took 12% of ECB funding, compared to a 5.24% share of the region’s bank assets.

The new management team at State-owned Anglo Irish Bank is reworking its proposed rescue plan for beleaguered Quinn Insurance to join forces with a foreign trade buyer to run the insurer and temporarily share ownership, The Irish Times reported. Anglo Irish is revising its proposals in an attempt to allay the Financial Regulator’s concerns about its ability to manage the firm by handing over control of the company to a large insurance partner.

National Irish Bank (NIB) has set aside €146 million for loan impairment charges related to losses on commercial property transactions, The Irish Times reported. The bank, which is outside the Government's guarantee scheme, said impairment charges related to bad loans were down €52 million on last year. The Danish-owned lender today reported losses of €133 million for the first three months of the year, saying economic conditions remained “very difficult”. The bank’s total loan book was €10.2 billion, down 5 per cent on last year.

New statistics compiled by InsolvencyJournal.ie reveal that insolvencies in the first four months of 2010, have increased by 27 per cent compared to the same period last year, Finfacts reported. A total of 532 company failures were recorded so far this year, compared to 419 between January and April 2009. 125 companies went bust in April, down 15 per cent from the March total of 147 insolvencies. Dublin continues to account for the majority of failures with 52 insolvencies - - 42 per cent of all insolvencies.

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.