Most Quinn staff eager for insurer to be sold, court told

MOST OF Quinn Insurance’s 1,600 employees are anxious that the proposed sale of the insurer to US insurer Liberty Mutual goes ahead because they believe it will safeguard their livelihoods, the High Court was told yesterday.

However, two groups representing a number of Quinn policyholders and others expressed concerns the proposed deal will involve the transfer to Liberty of only parts of the business and only the employees attached to those parts, while the taxpayer will be left to fund the “husk” of the business for years to come.

Both groups – Concerned Irish Citizens (CIC) and Concerned Irish Business (CIB) – submitted that the High Court had not been given enough information about the proposed deal by the insurer’s joint administrators.

Their lawyers have asked the court to direct that sufficient information by given to the court, including details of an assets purchase agreement (APA). Both groups also said they had been supportive of the Quinn Group’s alternative proposals for the insurer.

The president of the High Court, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns, yesterday began hearing the administrator’s application for approval for the proposed sale to a joint venture of Liberty and Anglo Irish Bank.

The hearing continues today.

The sale proposals require a total of €738 million public money be paid out of the State’s Insurance Compensation Fund (ICF) to the insurer, to be funded by a 2 per cent levy on all insurance policyholders in the State. That payment has been agreed to by the Minister for Finance and sanctioned by the court, subject to its approving the sale.

If the sale is sanctioned, €320 million will be paid directly from the fund, while the rest will be paid out as required and following further court applications.

At the hearing, the chairman of Quinn Insurance’s employee representative committee said the workers’ main concern was that the sale should go through.

Denis McDonald SC, for the administrators, said the court was being asked by CIB and CIC to address issues which it simply could not address.

Those matters included the impact of the proposed sale on taxpayers and the fitness of Liberty Mutual as a purchaser.

Mr Justice Kearns said he would not shut out employees’ concerns.

John Gordon SC, for CIB, said his clients were business people who held about 300 commercial insurance policies with Quinn, and that they were very concerned about the sale proposals.