Quinn Insurance in Administration

[haranguerer]

So let's just saddle the taxpayers of the 26 and let those nice Quinns away with their disgraceful behaviour just because Anglo were a shower of cnuts too.
All the Quinn lovers would be singing a different tune if they were living this side of the Border.

Loving these rabid stupid comments every once in a while. Wheres ballyconnell?

[haranguerer]

And of course theres some bias in my post. My entire point is that theres a lot of bias in that article. It is pedantic and spun, and some of my post is. Like all with this case, the truth is somewhere in between, I believe its closer to my view, but I dont have a soapbox the size of the southern medias to get that across, unfortunately noone seems to be looking objectively at those articles.

You admit to being biased. Why would the Irish Times be biased? Proper reasons please, no "the D4 meeja hate the culchies"

Becuase it personalises it. Every journalist, and every journalistic publication seeks to connect with their reader. This is best acheived by personalising events, tragedies, triumphs, corruption, recession. How many people will turn the page if theres a story about faceless bankers losing a fortune, or a business being found guilty of something or other? A hell of a lot. Give them a hero or a villain, and you can make the least sexy news hot property = more sales. Quinns fits the pantomime villain perfectly, and theres plenty of ammunition in fairness. Its certainly not in the newspapers interest to row back on this image in the interest of fairness, they're trying to sell papers after all.

[deiseach]

Admit it... You guys took it lieing down when your government signed over the country to eternal indebtedness.  You done feck all but grumble meekly. Where was the anger then? Now as you realise What went on don't make revolutionary idealists out of yourselves. Your passiveness to those you elected and their reactive decision making was staggering.

Eh? Fianna Fáil, the party that supposedly could put up a monkey and get it elected, got massacred in the elections. There's your anger right there. As for Seán Quinn, he has literally shown total contempt for the courts. Maybe we should have put them all against a wall - but in those circumstances, Seán Quinn would unquestionably have been among the first

[johnneycool]

Admit it... You guys took it lieing down when your government signed over the country to eternal indebtedness.  You done feck all but grumble meekly. Where was the anger then? Now as you realise What went on don't make revolutionary idealists out of yourselves. Your passiveness to those you elected and their reactive decision making was staggering.

Eh? Fianna Fáil, the party that supposedly could put up a monkey and get it elected, got massacred in the elections. There's your anger right there. As for Seán Quinn, he has literally shown total contempt for the courts. Maybe we should have put them all against a wall - but in those circumstances, Seán Quinn would unquestionably have been among the first

Even a decent gun would overheat if you were to shoot every gobshite banker/politician/developer/Civil servant/regulator/economist/journalist who's had a dirty hand in the current mess facing the Irish taxpayer.

[deiseach]

Even a decent gun would overheat if you were to shoot every gobshite banker/politician/developer/Civil servant/regulator/economist/journalist who's had a dirty hand in the current mess facing the Irish taxpayer.

There are times when I genuinely think a few shootings wouldn't go amiss. It was a couple of thousand parasites who created the mess so you wouldn't need more than a few guns. I row back from such thoughts when I think that you can't contain such a Reign of Terror, any more than they could in the original of the species in late 18th century France. But while politicians continue to behave as if public policy must be framed around keeping 'the markets' happy, the chances of such an eruption head towards 1

[Main Street]

No TYP. You are missing what happened. Quinn never bought the shares in Anglo that led to the big loss. He bought a margin in a trade. If the shares went up he was paid the margin. If the shares went down he forked over his loss to the middle man.

The 2.x bn did end up in someone's pocket(s). Literally.

But whos?

The middle man didn't win directly as he would be hedged. Let's say 5:1 leverage, I'm a bank, you give me EUR20 to take EUR100 long exposure to Anglo. I go and buy the EUR100 in the market and sell you the CFD with a given maturity which reflects my cost of funding that EUR100 e.g let's say is 6month trade, 5% interest rates and no dividends involved, then strike of the CFD is 100*(1+5%/2) = EUR102.5.

If stock goes up 1% I make 1% on the shares but I owe you 1% on the derivative. In theory given i have your EUR20 upfront as long as the shares are above EUR80 then I don't lose any money on the trade, but reality would be that under a Credit Support Annex there would be periodic posting of margin (from me to you if stock went up and form you to me if it went down).

How long he spent building this up and with what bank I don't know but the bank would have made:

i) commissions on the share activity charging SQ more than it cost them to buy them and also charging commissions to clients who wanted to sell their shares
ii) they would take a little margin on rates/dividends priced into the CFD

They would not however make anywhere close to the full notional amount - that has effectively been made if you like by the guys who sold the shares to the bank that was hedging the CFD. Some of these will have been guys cutting losses on long positions and others will have been short sellers I imagine - including possibly prop desks of banks, maybe even of the bank hedging the CFD though that would give rise to massive internal conflict of interest, doubtful whether would be approved or not.

So, Quinn taking a bet on the share price, took ownership of the 25% shares in Anglo that he bought with making a down payment and the rest over a period?
The seller still got that agreed price, even if the share price fell in value over that period.
If the share price went up, Quinn would just have gained the shares at a good price, he would still have to pay the agreed price for the shares or get rid of them at the higher value?

[deiseach]

Interesting takedown of Seán Quinn's Clint Eastwood-style self image here. Is it correct that Quinn Insurance did not employ an actuary?!

[supersarsfields]

I see Constantin Gurdgiev pointing out on twitter that it wasn't SQ that loaded his gamble on the state.

[orangeman]

No more holidays in Kerry, Galway or anywhere else in the south for Peter Darah for a while it seems.

Peter Quinn says son will not return to Irish Republic


Peter Darragh Quinn's father has said his son will not be returning to the Irish Republic to face the prospect of jail.

Peter Quinn Senior said his son believes he has no chance of getting "fair play or justice".

Peter Darragh Quinn is the nephew of the bankrupt former billionaire, Sean Quinn.

He was sentenced to jail in his absence on 20 July after failing to turn up at a Dublin court.

Peter Darragh Quinn was due to be sentenced for contempt of court alongside his cousin, Sean Quinn Jr, who is now in prison.

He was pictured at a Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) match in Kinawley, County Fermanagh, last weekend, alongside his father.

Peter Quinn Senior told The Impartial Reporter he believes there is a conspiracy in the Irish Republic against his family and said that although his son is "under a lot of pressure", his family is fully behind his decision to stay in Northern Ireland.

The authorities in the Republic of Ireland cannot force Peter Darragh Quinn to serve his sentence if he has left their jurisdiction.

[orangeman]

Interesting takedown of Seán Quinn's Clint Eastwood-style self image here. Is it correct that Quinn Insurance did not employ an actuary?!

I didn't know that Quinn Insurance "was based on providing insurance to people who couldn't normally get insurance" ??

Is this correct ?.

[deiseach]

No more holidays in Kerry, Galway or anywhere else in the south for Peter Darah for a while

Fermanagh to reach at least the quarter-finals next year!

[orangeman]

The Irish Times had a go at Quinn and his supporters on Tuesday. Yesterday they decided to have anothet go at Quinn and his supporters. They're doing a good job and trying their best to spread the anti - Quinn gospel.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0801/1224321232861.html?via=mr

Dishonest Quinn agenda well wide of GAA ethos

August 1st, 1912MARK DUNCAN and PAUL ROUSE

OPINION: Seán Quinn has made clear that his family's interests come before those of the State or the GAA's reputation

THE LINE-UP of GAA greats was certainly impressive – Joe Kernan, Mickey Harte, Seán Boylan, Colm O'Rourke, all decent men. All ex-players or managers with All-Ireland winning teams, all on the one platform and all, apparently, with a single, shared message: Seán Quinn and his family had been treated abominably by the former Anglo-Irish Bank and the institutions of the State.

They were victims, deserving of both the support of their fellow GAA members and a break from the authorities.

Among an estimated attendance of up to 4,000 Quinn family supporters in Ballyconnell on Sunday night, the GAA community was being summoned in defence of one of its own. As for Seán Quinn, the resolute and complete backing of GAA people is something he clearly takes for granted.

Addressing the large crowd, his voice quivering with emotion, Ireland's former richest man expressed his gratitude to the Fermanagh and Cavan GAA and, no less, the "whole GAA country".

The repeated invocation of the GAA in support of the Quinn family interest will surely be shocking to many of its members. There will be amazement that the very act of GAA membership should be construed as implying approval of actions that a High Court judge deemed "as far removed from the concept of honour and respectability as can be".

One might have thought that such a damning finding might have given some Quinn supporters, including those within the GAA, pause for deeper reflection. Not so, it seems. Subsequent to this judgment, and the order jailing Seán Quinn jnr and his cousin Peter – still at large – for contempt of court, the Teemore Shamrocks Gaelic Football Club in Fermanagh published a statement on its website decrying the "injustice inflicted on the Quinn Family" and urging their "fellow Gaels" to unite in opposition to the outrages being perpetrated against them.

The Teemore Shamrocks club is, of course, situated in that belt of Border counties where allegiance to the Quinn family appears, at times, to be almost religious in nature. It is an allegiance built on hard work and a business acumen that gave rise to a group of successful companies and which delivered much-needed employment to a region that might otherwise have succumbed to decay.

It is allegiance also derived from a generosity to local units of the GAA, arguably the dominant social organisation in many of the communities where he based his businesses.

Through the provision of employment and patronage, Quinn built a phenomenally powerful network of friends and allies and has, without question, contributed much to the economic and social development of the Border territory. Quinn's past achievements are therefore not in doubt, nor is his passion for, or commitment to, the GAA. But that does not excuse the recent actions of the Quinn family or the efforts of his supporters to align his interests with the ethos of the GAA.

The Quinn business empire took four decades to build and less than four years to collapse. There is patently nothing to rejoice in its demise – this is a familial, local and national tragedy. However, there is equally nothing to defend in the manner in which Quinn and his family have handled their unravelling fortunes.

Evidence of the secreting of assets, by means remarkable for their "dishonesty and deviousness", according to High Court judge Peter Kelly, is not contested. And the figures are staggering: the international property portfolio to which the Quinns are clinging is worth some €500 million.

It is difficult to envisage how such a squirrelling of private assets and wealth – in defiance of court orders – is compatible with the values of an association whose unique place in Irish life has been built on ideas of service, community and the redistribution of resources from top to bottom, from the centre to the periphery.

Yet, according to former Meath footballer and RTÉ pundit Colm O'Rourke, the GAA tradition of "solidarity" is one that should be readily and unquestionably extended to the Quinns. Fine Gael MEP and former GAA president Seán Kelly clearly agrees.

Interviewed on Radio Kerry, he remarked on how it was "part of the ethos" of the GAA to get behind a "decent family". The GAA, he added, "stand by our own".

Loyalty to friends in difficulty is, of course, an admirable trait. But the argument that the Quinns are GAA people, have made an enormous contribution to the GAA and are therefore deserving of the GAA community's uncritical and unqualified support is hardly tenable.

Can you imagine the reaction were the rugby fraternity to take to the streets or issue statements in support of the disgraced banker Seánie FitzPatrick, a former player and keen supporter of the game? Or if the soccer community were to publicly rally in defence of TD and well-known champion of the game Mick Wallace, in the wake of his admission that he deliberately withheld VAT from the Revenue Commissioners?

Individuals are entitled, of course, to support any cause they wish. But what is striking about the reported contributions of both those GAA personalities at the Ballyconnell rally and the former GAA president is the impression created that support for the Quinns is consistent with carefully nurtured GAA values – that it was, in fact, an "expression" of the GAA's great strength.

The GAA does indeed have a proud tradition of looking after its own, of showing solidarity with those in need. It is everywhere evident among GAA communities at home and abroad – in the comfort blanket it throws around members and their families at times of bereavement and tragedy and in the helping hand it has extended, for more than a century, to emigrants arriving isolated in far-flung countries.

Do the current circumstances of the Quinns, as outlined in the courts, really merit the same type of consideration? Ultimately, the problem with Quinn is not that he took a risk and lost. Many ordinary homeowners and small business people did likewise. No, the problem with Quinn is the calculated and complex efforts to put assets beyond the reach of his creditors – in this case, the State – to feather the nests of none but his family.

In the end, it will be up to the courts to decide the merits of the Quinn case against the former Anglo Irish Bank.

But in the manner in which he has conducted his campaign of public protest, as much as his dealings with the Irish courts, Quinn has demonstrated that there is nothing that is subordinate to the interests of his own family. Not the citizens of this State – and not the reputation of the GAA.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Bingo]

One question hasn't been asked yet and needs to be addressed:

Why wasn't the Banty on the Stage the other night in Ballyconnell?

[orangeman]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sport/2012/0801/1224321234656.html

Urban v  Rural debate

Quinn case exposes a fault line within GAAReconciling the cultural differences between the Ireland of close-knit local loyalties and that of major population centres isn't going to get any easier, writes SEAN MORAN

IT'S all happening for the GAA, as August – the crucible of the championship season – arrives with the most compelling set of football quarter-finals since the round was introduced 12 years ago.

In the background Eugene McGee's Football Review Committee has opened for business, canvassing views on the state of the game. On Sunday the demonstration in Ballyconnell in support of Seán Quinn and his family featured some expansive talk about the GAA standing up for the stricken border businessman and this was amplified on Monday when former GAA president Seán Kelly, now a Fine Gael MEP, approved of the demonstration as "an expression of moral support".

Earlier in the day, the television schedules for the weekend revealed RTÉ had exercised its priority option on the football quarter-finals by choosing to screen the Dublin-Laois match on Saturday evening, the timing and the champions' vast demographic making it the box-office fixture of the weekend even if the Donegal-Kerry contest is the most eagerly anticipated of the quarter-finals on football criteria.

TV3 have previously made no bones about their preference for Dublin matches, as they deliver big audiences. RTÉ has tended to take a broader view but on this occasion has passed on what would generally be considered the weekend's big match.

There are themes running through the above events and they create challenges for the GAA. The FRC has given itself a very broad remit in defining what areas it intends to explore. That includes rule changes and as a result the standing committee on rule changes in the games has effectively been put into dry dock until the football committee's findings are released later in the year. It will be a surprise if there isn't a groundswell of support for intensifying penalties applicable to cynical or "professional" fouling.

Already ideas have been floated such as the equivalent of basketball's team fouls – awarding close-in frees once a specified number of fouls have been committed in order to undermine the value of fouling in the opposition half of the field.

Suspensions for cumulative yellow cards are another item likely to be on the agenda in the near future. These would be excellent ideas because if punishments don't disadvantage the perpetrators, the overwhelming evidence suggests the breaking of rules for unfair advantage will continue.

Regularly we hear pundits talking about defenders "having no choice" but to pull down attacking opponents – an acceptance that disregarding rules is a legitimate tool in any team's equipment.

Confronting that attitude is a major task for Gaelic games because not alone do many club and county partisans believe their self-interest is more important than any rules that might get broken but when the authorities charged with enforcing those rules impose punishments and make their displeasure known, the same partisans invariably turn their cause into a campaign against injustice and "trial by media". So many of those boxes were being ticked in Ballyconnell, the wonder is there weren't even more GAA people demonstrating.

Supporters of Seán Quinn and his family business see decisions of the courts as injustice, not on the grounds of any reasonably identified shortcomings in the judgments reached so far but because Quinn has been a generous benefactor to the local communities both as an employer and a patron of local activities, especially the GAA.

Or, as Seán Kelly put it: "We'd probably do exactly the same thing down here in Kerry if someone who was very loyal to us was in difficulty."

Kelly was careful not to get involved in the rights and wrongs of matters before the courts, but his intervention wasn't helpful to the GAA as it helped sustain a view that the association is somehow collectively supporting the Quinns, which is simply not the case. Mickey Harte, Joe Kernan, Colm O'Rourke, Seán Boylan and Jarlath Burns are all entitled to their opinions but the issues at the heart of the Quinn business collapse are nothing to do with the GAA and there are many within the association who have a very different view of the facts as they have emerged.

The view that rules are handed down by people in Dublin to make life difficult for rural Ireland is not new and in recent times the GAA has had grounds for concern over a sense of alienation between the ordinary membership and the national administration in Croke Park. The urbanisation of modern society has been flagged as a big challenge for the GAA and reconciling the cultural differences between the Ireland of close-knit local loyalties and that of major population centres with their bumper demographics and less rooted communities isn't going to get any easier.

[supersarsfields]

Are the solicitors beginning to get twitchy now? From the times.


<sup>Why Anglo's former lawyers might have uneasy moments

THE RECENT charges brought against Seán FitzPatrick and two other former directors of Anglo Irish Bank must be leaving the bank's former corporate lawyers, Matheson Ormsby Prentice (MOP), shifting uncomfortably in their offices on the south Dublin quays.

FitzPatrick and the other two, Willie McAteer and Pat Whelan, were charged with providing unlawful financial assistance as a result of the bank's loans to six members of the family of Seán Quinn and the Maple 10 group of investors to buy shares in Anglo. The three men were charged with 16 offences under section 60 of the Companies Act, with one charge relating to each borrower.

MOP advised on the July 2008 transaction in which Quinn's massive investment in the bank held through contracts for difference was unwound with six Quinn family members taking a stake of 15 per cent and the Maple 10 taking a 10 per cent shareholding.

A letter from MOP to the directors of Anglo on July 22nd, 2008, outlined the advice they gave on the transaction, although it contains no specific reference to Maple 10. It included advice given on "the acquisition by each of certain other, unrelated parties, of less than 3 per cent each (in aggregate 13.4 per cent) of the issued share capital of the bank".

The letter says the firm advised Anglo on the basis of the information provided, that "on the basis that the lending to the Quinn shareholders was in all respects in the ordinary course of business of the bank and that the loans provided did not reduce the net assets of the bank, that the provision by the bank of loans for the purpose of the acquisitions of shares and the taking of security over the acquired shares did not constitute unlawful financial assistance contrary to the provisions of the Companies Acts 1963 to 2006." One wonders if MOP has been looking over the information provided by Anglo and the advice the firm gave in return in light of recent developments.</sup>