* A NEW report on controversies surrounding the Dublin Docklands Development Authority will be presented to Cabinet this week and published thereafter, reports the Sunday Business Post.
The report, by the Comptroller and Auditor General, will examine the costs to the State as a result of the development authority’s involvement with the Irish Glass Bottle site deal.
Efforts were made three years ago to overhaul governance and controls at the authority.
The report is expected to be critical of the former regime at the authority. The old board counted Sean FitzPatrick, former chairman of Anglo Irish Bank, as one of its members.
* A CONSORTIUM of banks owed more than €670 million by the Moran hotel group has appointed Grant Thornton to assess its five-year business plan, according to the Sunday Times.
The hotel group submitted the plan to its four lenders on Friday.
The group, which employs almost 1,200 people, is profitable on an operating level, but is lumbered with debt following its 2008 purchase of six Bewley’s hotels. Under the plan it intends to upgrade the Bewley’s hotel in Ballsbridge to a four-star.
* THE GOVERNMENT is seeking an “insolvency czar”, reports the Sunday Times. The position involves heading up its proposed new insolvency service and overseeing debt-settlement arrangements between banks and their customers.
The insolvency czar will play a key part in framing how non-judicial debt settlements will work in practice, the paper writes.
The proposed service will have a role in adjudicating on applications by households that choose to be declared insolvent in exchange for a writedown of part of their mortgages and other borrowings.
* THE CHIEF executive of the Lloyd’s insurance market, Richard Ward, has a contingency plan to switch euro underwriting to multi-currency settlement if Greece abandons the euro, he has told the Sunday Telegraph.
The multi-billion pound insurance market has reduced its exposure “as much as possible” to the euro zone, he said. Europe accounts for 18 per cent of Lloyd’s £23.5 billion (€29.4 billion) of gross written premiums.
“I don’t think that if Greece exited the euro it would lead to the collapse of the euro zone, but what we need to do is prepare for that eventuality,” Mr Ward told the newspaper.
