Anglo revelations

The crash just got crashier. From today’s Tribune:

* At a meeting in September Willie McAteer, Anglo finance director, told the head of the Financial Regulator Patrick Neary the bank would be “managing” its balance sheet, to which Neary is recorded as replying, “Fair play to you, Willie.”

* A phone call records officials from Anglo Irish Bank telling staff at the Financial Regulator in October that the bank is “manipulating” its balance sheet. “It is not a real number,” the Anglo staff member is recorded as telling the regulator.

* Anglo auditors Ernst & Young told the bank there was no need to include reference to the transactions in documents sent to shareholders in December, saying only information already in the public domain should be included.

* Anglo assisted Irish Life & Permanent (IL&P) coming up to the building society’s half-year ending 30 June by engaging in transactions that reduced IL&P’s reliance on emergency funds from the European Central Bank.

* Anglo has entered into “reciprocal arrangements” to bolster balance sheets with a range of international financial institutions in the past, including Royal Bank of Scotland, AIG and Hypo Real Estate.

* Anglo received requests in the last six months for “balance sheet management” transactions from Lehman Brothers, ABN and
West LB.

* AIB and Bank of Ireland provided Anglo Irish with €6bn of funding on 23 January at the “behest” of the Central Bank

* In September, Anglo was hit by major deposit withdrawals by State Street and AIB Investment Managers.

* At a meeting between officials from IL&P, the Central Bank and the Financial Regulator (FR) in January, Mary O’Dea, consumer director of the FR, “rounded” on IL&P and in an aggressive manner asked, “Why did you do this?” IL&P were concerned about O’Dea’s reaction and raised it at the Department of Finance

Ireland will need an EU bailout by the summer. What strikes me about the Tribune coverage today is that there is so much of it. In other words, it’s a newsdump of stories, all of them as bad as each other. If these stories were dripfed over a week it would have made page one on every single day.