THE MINISTER FOR FINANCE has said text messages between the chief executive of the former Anglo Irish Bank and one of its major customers, developer Paddy McKillen, in which the chief executive discussed confidential board decisions were “appropriate and necessary”.
Michael Noonan says the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, which now incorporates Anglo, has found texts sent by its CEO Mike Aynsley to McKillen to be “an appropriate and necessary communication”.
It emerged in March that Aynsley had texted McKillen in January to reveal the outcome of a discussion by the bank’s board into how it would treat McKillen’s loans to the bank.
“BB have now been told that the bank has chosen a path to work consensually with you rather than to deal with them, I understand they are not happy,” Aynsley texted, with a follow-up message a few minutes later reading:
Please keep that confidential I cant have board positions like this leaking out.
The texts emerged in the course of McKillen’s action at the High Court in London against the sale of some NAMA debts to the Barclay brothers, a deal which allowed the brothers to take control of a chain of five-star London hotels.
If McKillen’s action – which is continuing – is successful, it is likely to result in the reversal of NAMA’s €800 million deal to sell the debts, a move which would prove a temporary blow to the state’s ‘bad bank’, with McKillen reportedly intending to complete a similar deal of his own.
In response to written Dáil questions from Gerry Adams, Noonan said he had written to the bank’s chairman Alan Dukes to seek assurances about the board’s operations.
He was told, in response, “that IBRC uses multiple forms of communication when communicating with clients and text messaging is a normal means of communicating with people quickly and efficiently in certain circumstances, in particular with clients who travel regularly and who do not have immediate access to email”.
In this case, the bank considered the texts between Aynsley and McKillen – despite the former’s fears about them being disclosed – were “an appropriate and necessary communication to confirm to the client the outcome of the Board’s deliberation”.
Noonan added that IBRC and NAMA were separate entities, in spite of the fact that both are wholly owned by the Minister, and that IBRC would therefore not make business decisions “based on independent courses of action chosen by NAMA”.
It emerged yesterday that Aynsley had written to the chairman of the Oireachtas finance committee, Alex White TD, offering to attend a hearing with TDs and Senators where he and Dukes would explain the tactics used by IBRC to recoup debts from its debtors.
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