THE CHIEF executive of State-owned Anglo Irish Bank, Mike Aynsley, has criticised the response of the previous government to the banking crisis, saying it had “continually misunderstood” the causes of the crisis.
In an interview on a visit home to Australia, Mr Aynsley said even when they were aware of the scale of the crisis, the authorities proposed insufficient measures as events moved out of their control.
This triggered a series of unintended consequences, Mr Aynsley told a national newspaper, the Australian Financial Review.
The newspaper said Mr Aynsley was particularly scathing of the previous government’s handling of the National Asset Management Agency, saying that it was “a good idea” but poorly executed.
A spokesman for Nama described his comments as “misguided”, saying the government’s approach was endorsed by many international commentators and by the European authorities.
“Banks like Anglo played a major role in creating the problems that Nama is now working to resolve and the criticisms of the chief executive of Anglo have to be seen in that context,” said the spokesman. “Unlike Anglo, with over 1,000 exiting staff, Nama – as a start-up organisation which had to recruit its staff from the market – has had a remarkable first year.”
In its first year, Nama had acquired 11,000 loans of €72 billion, approved €2.7 billion of sales, analysed the business plans of 40 per cent of debtors and approved working and development capital loans of €730 million, he said.
In addition, the EU Commission has given “a clean bill of health” to the valuations on more than 40 per cent of the loans acquired. “This is hardly the hallmarks of poor execution,” said the spokesman for the agency.
Mr Aynsley described as counterproductive and punitive the 5.8 per cent interest rate on the €67.5 billion EU-IMF bailout.
Mr Aynsley – described in the article as “head of the world’s most toxic lender” – insisted Ireland’s problems and those of other European peripheral countries could not be solved by themselves.“What’s needed is a fundamental rethink by Europe,” he said. Mr Aynsley was appointed to Anglo by former minister for finance Brian Lenihan in 2009.
