Former Davy stockbrokers chief executive Brian McKiernan has resigned from the Provost’s Council at Trinity College Dublin and the board of a Dublin hospital in the wake of the bond deal scandal.
Mr McKiernan stepped down as a member of the advisory council at the university and the governing council of the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital on Adelaide Road in Dublin.
Trinity College Dublin confirmed that the former Davy chief, a UCD graduate, was no longer a member of the Provost’s Council, a group of prominent and mostly wealthy graduates and supporters of the university from around the world who act as advisers to the college. Mr McKiernan’s profile was taken off Trinity’s webpage for the Provost’s Council on Monday.
Accepted
Patrick Dowling, president of the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital, said that Mr McKiernan offered to resign from the council of the hospital and the council accepted his resignation.
Mr Dowling, a former Waterford Wedgwood chief financial officer, said the council made the decision 10 days ago. Mr McKiernan had been a member since 2019.
His departure follows the resignation of another former Davy executive, Tony Garry, from the board of another hospital, the Mater in Dublin, over the controversial bond deal.
Mr McKiernan’s departure from the two roles comes amid the ongoing fallout from the Central Bank’s €4.1 million fine of Davy over 16 employees secretly being on both sides of a bond deal. He resigned from Davy earlier this month days after the fine was imposed. He left the stockbroker with non-executive director Kyran McLaughlin and head of bonds Barry Nangle.
Davy subsequently closed its bond desk in the wake of the fine and said that none of the 16 Davy employees who were involved in the deal are working with the firm.
Knockdown price
The Central Bank fined the country’s biggest stockbroking firm after finding that the 16 staff, including Mr McKiernan and other senior executives, were part of a group who secretly bought a former Anglo Irish Bank bond at a knockdown price from Northern Ireland property developer Patrick Kearney.
Mr Kearney had not been told by Davy that it had sold the bond on his behalf to its own staff, who sought to profit on the deal. He later discovered he could have received more for the bond.
The firm has put itself up for sale over the controversy to resolve the ownership issues following the regulatory fine. A number of the group of 16 are shareholders of the firm.
Mr McKiernan is the firm’s main shareholder, with an estimated 13 per cent stake. He joined Davy in 1989 and became head of private clients in 2001. He took over as chief executive in 2015.
