Access to Information Updates
Irish Water’s 2015 annual report is out. There’s lots of interesting bits in there.
Irish Water’s total liabilities grew from €890m in 2014 to €1.44bn in 2015.
Irish Water borrowed lots:
Net debt grew from €324m to €890m.
Borrowings:
The number of people paying bills in the 4th cycle cratered. Here’s a graph:
Here’s the breakdown:
Operating costs:
A note towards the end:
Above is the house at the address (300 Ridgeview Drive, Palm Beach, Florida 33480) given by developer John Flynn as part of his case against the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), in court documents filed on December 20. NamaWineLake and Paul Williams at the Indo have both mentioned the filing.
The judge in the case is Lewis Kaplan who was previously a judge in high profile Guantanamo and Gambino family cases.
Obviously NAMA and its staff have denied (or will deny) the allegations made, and members of NAMA’s board (including some of the people named in the complaint) made a vociferous defence of the Agency at a Public Accounts Committee hearing the same the day the complaint was filed in New York. No documents have yet been filed by NAMA in relation to this case, but I will post them once they are available.
At the PAC hearing the head of NAMA Brendan McDonagh said there is a:
“carefully orchestrated operation . . . to damage Nama”. “It’s designed to damage Nama and undermine its credibility with taxpayers of this country.”
The full document is below:
This comes from an anonymous Twitter account – @QuinnAnglo – so all the usual provisos apply.
The tweeter in question claims this document to be the Statement of Affairs of IBRC before the liquidation of the company in February 2013. It includes a list of creditors (though not depositors – as Noonan intervened on that one).
The Statement of Affairs was handed over to the Department of Finance recently and took some 8 months to produce. Some hedge funds are investigating if the bank’s insolvency was contrived and are considering taking legal action.
The account has been mentioning it to various journalists on Twitter:
http://t.co/6q0SX5b0L9 @IrishTimes @SiCarswell @lydiamurph @PaulSommerville @rtenews @irishexaminer @sundaybusiness
— Quinn/Anglo (@QuinnAnglo) October 10, 2013
The list of creditors is hard to read but contains some interesting names.
Of course that’s on the basis that the document is real. I asked the anonymous Twitter account if the document is real and got this reply:
@gavinsblog you don't know it's real but I can assure you it is
— Quinn/Anglo (@QuinnAnglo) October 11, 2013
Here is the document:
Last year we wrote about an unredacted document we obtained that showed IBRC’s winddown plans up to 2020. Now that IBRC is in liquidation we are publishing the document in full, and much of it is still relevant in terms of the loanbook:
TheStory.ie has obtained a confidential plan submitted by Anglo Irish Bank/Irish Nationwide to the European Commission, which was put together by a working group from the Department of Finance, the NTMA, the Central Bank, Anglo and INBS.
The plan, dated January 31, 2011 was submitted to the European Commission for approval and was guided by the agreement reached between the Irish authorities, the EU, the IMF and ECB in November 2010. It outlines in detail the workout plan for the IBRC entity from now until 2020, under two headline scenarios – a base and stress scenario.
I intend releasing the full 66 page plan on TheStory.ie.
NAMA is rather complicated. And so is its ownership structure. One would think NAMA would publish their company documents on their website – but they don’t. It is afterall an interminably opaque organisation.
To remedy at least a part of this, I am publishing the company accounts of all NAMA related companies – firstly and most importantly, those of National Asset Management Agency Investment Limited. This is the company that operates the Master special purpose vehicle (SPV), which is 51% owned by private interests, and 49% owned by the State. The reason for the split is so that NAMA’s debt can stay off the balance sheet of the State.
Interesting, isn’t it?
National Asset Management Agency Investment Limited has 100,000,000 shares. 49,000,000 of those are held by the National Asset Management Agency. Another 17,000,000 are held each by Irishlife Assurance PLC (part of the Permanent TSB group), New Ireland Assurance Company (part of the Bank of Ireland group) and Percy Nominees (Part of the AIB group)
Percy Nominees is an interesting one. Why a nominee company? Who are the private investors (if any), aside from AIB pension funds, that are invested in NAMA? The nominee company itself has a colourful history.
In 2007, Percy took action against Treasury Holdings over the title of the Northside Shopping Centre in Coolock. The Independent:
The freehold of the centre was held in trust by Percy Nominees Ltd for both it and Mr Conlan, subject to a 99-year lease from October 1976 held by N1 Property Developments Ltd.
BNY claims that it, Ark Life and Mr Conlan entered in November 1998 into a co-ownership agreement with AIB Investment Managers Ltd (AIBIM), which included provisions governing the sale by one party of its interest in the centre.
Let’s follow this for a second. Peter Conlan appears to be a property developer, who may also be the same Peter Conlan who is a director of Tanat Limited and Pensar Limited. Tanat is itself a company also connected with Treasury Holdings. Let’s see how:
An interesting list there of over 300 companies of which Treasury Holdings chief Johnny Ronan (DOB December 4, 1953) is a director. Peter Conlan says in the document that he is a director of Boulden, a company dissolved in 1998, and Leisureworld Limited. According to the Tanat accounts, the company values its fixed assets at €14,000,000 as of December 2008. The company appears to own one property, and owes one bank €7.4m. The company is 50% owned by Mr Ronan and Mr Conlan.
Mr Conlan may or may not be still involved with Percy Nominees, but interesting documents nonetheless.
And what about Percy itself? Percy appears to own, on behalf of its clients, several properties in the UK. There is also a similarly named company called Percy Investment Funds PLC from which Percy Nominees director Niall Markey (an AIB employee) resigned in 2005. Percy Investment funds was categorised by British authorities as an offshore fund and it requested to have its authorisation revoked as a Collective Investment Scheme in the same year. Another director is Head of Property in the asset management area of AIBIM Caroline O’Shea, according to the AIB website. Here is more details on Percy Nominees:
The accounts of CDB UK Ltd, an Anglo subsidiary for 2007, 2008 and 2009.
Since we now own them – I will be buying and publishing the accounts for all Anglo Irish Bank subsidiaries. Many of them have or had Minister Brian Lenihan as a director.
First up is Anglo Irish Asset Finance, 2008 and 2009 accounts. The 2009 accounts contain the now infamous yen loss, Colm McCarthy referred to recently. The notes to the accounts are particularly interesting
As part of an ongoing process, the B1 and most recently available accounts for Wicklow Port Company.
As part of an ongoing process, the B1 and most recently available accounts for Dun Laoghaire Harbour Company.