]]> http://www.shaneross.ie/somers-season-at-planet-plutocrat/feed/ 0 http://www.shaneross.ie/micheal-ds-swipe-hits-home/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=micheal-ds-swipe-hits-home http://www.shaneross.ie/micheal-ds-swipe-hits-home/#comments Sun, 05 May 2013 09:00:37 +0000 nuala.walsh http://www.shaneross.ie/?p=2674 Last Thursday I was wandering sleepily along the corridors of Heathrow airport at seven o’clock in the morning. I took a brief glance at the newsstand – and woke with a jolt.
The headline on the front page of the Financial Times was tailor-made for passengers on the 7.30am flight to Dublin: “Irish President warns of EU upheaval”.
Good God, I thought, proudly, Michael D has gone global.
And he had. Even Taoiseach Enda Kenny cannot command equal attention from such a prestigious publication. Labour Party leader and Tanaiste, Eamon Gilmore, hardly merits a footnote on the bottom of page 23. Michael D has hit the big time.

]]> http://www.shaneross.ie/micheal-ds-swipe-hits-home/feed/ 0 http://www.shaneross.ie/gloved-up-b-of-i-gives-a-thumping/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=gloved-up-b-of-i-gives-a-thumping http://www.shaneross.ie/gloved-up-b-of-i-gives-a-thumping/#comments Thu, 02 May 2013 14:17:58 +0000 nuala.walsh http://www.shaneross.ie/?p=2669  

Last Wednesday morning I rose at an unearthly hour. The Bank of Ireland, with diabolical cunning, had decided to hold its AGM early in the morning. It was a 9.30am start for small shareholders in Dublin’s Burlington Hotel. The rush-hour traffic around the Burlington at that time of day would deter all but the most determined – or disillusioned – from attending. The price of overnight accommodation in Dublin would ensure that few from outside the capital could afford an overnight stop there.

The days of staying in the Burlington – or even less luxurious lodgings – are over for Bank of Ireland shareholders. Dividends are a distant memory.

I picked up dozens of proxies, left for me by small shareholders, who were unable to attend because of the expense or the awkward time of day. Numbers were well down.

Round One to the board.

Seated in the middle of the Burlington’s crowded Pembroke Room I looked at the backs of the heads of the shareholders in front of me. There was a sea of grey hair – or no hair. An uncanny number of the ears of shareholders were attached to hearing aids. Their clothes were drab. Bodies were slumped in the chairs. There was no shortage of senior citizens on crutches.

This was the most depressing gathering of beaten dockets I had ever attended. The average age must have been close to 70. Ireland’s ageing poor had come out to play.

Many of them pensioners, they had similar stories. Their life savings had been lost in the Bank of Ireland. They had depended on the board and management for dividends. Now they had nothing.

A few yards away, facing them, 14 plutocrats looked down on the battered rabble from their grand platform. Not one of them was less than a millionaire.

The personal wealth of the entire board runs into hundreds of millions. As each shareholder related their personal circumstances, the new Governor, Archie Kane, oozed unconvincing sympathy.

Kane, the man exuding such unctious mutterings, has snatched a package of €492,000 to represent the impoverished shareholders.

On Wednesday, the Irish Government refused to stand in his way and voted for his re-election. It even voted for the re-election of the €843,000-a-year chief executive, Richie Boucher.

Michael Noonan, a humane and decent man, has made a dreadful mistake. Last Wednesday, he conclusively put the Government in the bankers’ corner. In the coming weeks, there will be some modest tinkering with the two men’s pay, but he has voted with the people’s shareholding to restore both bankers to positions that neither should hold.

On Wednesday, Noonan was a no-show at the AGM. No representative of the Department of Finance was in evidence at the slaughter of the small shareholders.

Despite the minister’s 15 per cent shareholding, held in trust for the nation, no one stood up to explain his voting decision. He voted by proxy, quietly, far away from the masses at the meeting, behind closed doors.

That is how things work in the cosy relationship between the minister, his mandarins and the banks.

Governor Archie Kane, a canny Scot, cleverly addressed his first AGM with soporific facts that would anaesthetise a caffeine addict.

He read a script full of “subordinated debt, asset-covered securities and Basel 3 regulations”. The assembled small shareholders hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.

Round 2 to the board.

Most of the initial questions from the floor were helpful to Kane and his crew. Shareholders queried obscure aspects of the accounts. One poor soul, confessing to being a member of Fianna Fail, praised the directors, particularly the performance of former Fianna Fail minister for Agriculture , Joe Walsh.

Round 3 to the board.

It was going Archie’s way. Until Archie fielded the inevitable question about Richie’s and his own remuneration. In a suicidal effort to dodge the big bullet, they sent Joe out to bat, armed with a well-rehearsed response.

Suddenly, we were launched into Planet Plutocrat. Joe was the pilot. God help us.

Joe Walsh, the €90,000-a-year part-time director, was selected by the other directors to justify the pay of Archie, the 10 grand-a-week part-timer, and Boucher, the 16 grand-a-week full-timer.

The board’s ignorance of local niceties was breathtaking. Not surprisingly, as eight out of 10 non-executive directors are based abroad.

Perhaps the new Scottish Governor has not followed Irish politics.

Perhaps he is not aware that Joe’s Fianna Fail pedigree is hardly the best sales platform for asserting financial rectitude, corporate governance and probity?

Joe of Fianna Fail gave the entire board a clean sheet. Ah well, went the board’s thinking, if the two boys’ pay is okay by Joe, it must be kosher.

Who better than a Fianna Fail minister, a cabinet member under Bertie Ahern and a junior minister under Charlie Haughey to give a character reference for Archie and Richie?

What could be more convincing than a Fianna Fail loyalist signalling the all-clear to the “rigorous” process that selected Archie?

Charlie and Bertie would be proud of Joe, their protege, ending up as boss of the pay awards at the Bank of Ireland. Didn’t Bertie make ex-TD Liam Lawlor of tribunal fame a member of the Oireachtas ethics committee?

From that moment, it was all downhill for the directors. Joe Walsh, nominated to the board by a Fianna Fail finance minister, was living proof that nothing has changed since the 2008 banking crisis.

Will the former regulator Patrick Neary now reappear on the board of AIB to give his blessing to the new corporate governance regime?

The questioning became more penetrating. Nearly all the shareholders (except those with disabilities) stood up to ask their questions. The directors remained seated.

Archie Kane failed to rise to his feet in response to questions. The arrogance began to show.

After three hours, Kane announced that there would be three more questions. He then closed the meeting with dozens of shareholders still waiting to query the board about the loss of their life savings.

He despatched them off for sausages and chips.

No meaningful questions were answered. Kane ducked all enquiries about his bizarre past. He refused to respond to queries about how he had pulled off a juicy €59,000 ‘consultancy’ deal to add to his monstrous €394,000 package for a part-time job.

He did not reply to my own probing about the circumstances of his departure from Lloyds TSB.

He ignored the key question about the sensational stripping of his performance bonus from Lloyds following the mis-selling of Personal Protection Insurance (PPI) when he was insurance director.

He merely told me that some of my facts were wrong, but then failed to identify the errors.

The Bank of Ireland is in bad hands. In the driving seat is Richie Boucher, the €843,000 full-timer who approved of the mad property frenzy.

In the chair is Governor Kane, the €492,000 part-timer who was surplus to requirements at Lloyds, but has somehow landed on his feet in Dublin, baggage and all.

In the background is the Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan.

When the chips were down for Archie and Richie, Michael was not found wanting.

Leave Jack to the tender mercies of his members. Perhaps they will vote him out of office in due course. Jack is an insider, part of the establishment with a deceptive growl. I have a feeling that if you were a member of Siptu you would be voting for Jack.

Why do I say that? Because this week you will decide whether to vote for other establishment figures. On Wednesday morning at 9.30am the Bank of Ireland holds its AGM in Dublin’s Burlington Hotel.

Will you be there, Michael? You should be. You hold no less than 15 per cent of the votes on behalf of the Irish people. Go on, turn up, give the bankers hell. They have given you the run-around for long enough.

Perhaps you will be otherwise engaged? If you are, is there any chance you could sign over your proxy to me?

You still have until 9.30am tomorrow to exercise your proxy. I am available to pick it up any time today. As a small shareholder, who has lost 90 per cent of his money, I will be in the Burlington at the AGM anyway .

If you give me the proxy, I promise to vote AGAINST every single resolution. I assume that will be carrying out your wishes?

I have a suspicion that Ireland’s taxpayers would support opposition to the board’s resolutions. Yet I have an uneasy feeling that you are about to vote IN FAVOUR of them.

I am uneasy because for two weeks in a row I have asked you Dail Questions about which way you intend to cast the peoples’ votes on all eight resolutions .

On both occasions you have avoided answering. You have told me that “my department is in the final stages of its review of the relevant documentation. As previously stated, the ultimate voting decision will be based on the assessment of the best interests of the State and to maximise the return to the taxpayer of the funds invested in the Bank”.

Come on, Michael. Cut the crap. Follow your gut.

Wednesday provides the perfect chance for you to detach yourself from the bankers’ hook on which you are impaled. You are either on the side of the bankers or on the side of the people. Your vote on the resolutions will reveal all.

The Bank of Ireland has two reasons for celebration. First, the bankers’ bete noire , regulator Matthew Elderfield, has just announced that he is on the way out of Ireland. Second, BoI boss Richie Boucher’s old pal, Pat Farrell, has revealed that he is on the way in – this time to work as a super spinner for Boucher. The two guys are close: Boucher even attended a milestone birthday party for Pat a couple of years ago. Oh well.

The new broom is in retreat. The old guard is back. Elderfield, barely a wet day in Ireland, is heading home to the UK. Farrell, currently head of the Irish Banking Federation (IBF), has decided to give the Bank of Ireland the benefit of his talents, acquired during the property madness.

Farrell, who has spun so cleverly for Ireland’s bankers for nine troubled years, who spun so well for Fianna Fail as general secretary for six years, who even spun for the EBS for a spell, is now about to spin for the Bank of Ireland.

Bank of Ireland will be run by three of the old guard. Governor Archie Kane will be the titular head. Archie has made a bit of a name for himself since becoming Governor. He has now been twice stripped of performance bonuses, due to losses in the payment protection insurance (PPI) scandal at his last employer, Lloyds TSB. Boucher, a miracle survivor of Bank of Ireland’s property lending lunacy, remains chief executive. Farrell, ace banking propagandist and lobbyist during the bankers’ years of shame, will be the main link with the media.

And we wonder why Matthew Elderfield threw in the towel?

We should mourn Elderfield’s exit, not because he leaves having achieved so much, but because he leaves so much to be achieved.

Is there more to Elderfield’s departure than the bland statements offered last week? Central Bank Governor Patrick Honohan’s and Minister for Finance Noonan’s responses to the shock news were tailored to reassure the markets.

Honohan affected no surprise: “Although it was evident to me that we were very likely to have Matthew with us for only a few years, it is sad that this period is now drawing to a close.”

Perhaps. But wait, Matthew was on a short five-year contract. He cut and ran after a mere three. A little puzzling with so much still to be done to clean up the banks.

Flanked by seven male comrades, Josephine sat serenely in the middle of a long line of grey-suited, balding apparatchiks, parrying TDs’ questions about the activities of her unloved Revenue Commissioners.

Last Thursday, Joseph Stalin would have been proud of Josephine Feehily.

She could not take questions on policy as she was an enforcer. Josephine is about to enforce one of the most draconian taxes ever imposed. Ireland’s soviet-style hit squad has been charged with ensuring that no one escapes the long arm of the property taxman.

The enforcer of the property tax had a date with her interrogators. It was a doddle for her. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is dominated by government TDs in favour of the property tax. She had been specially chosen by Finance Minister Michael Noonan as the only person in Ireland with the ability to squeeze the last euro out of Ireland’s impoverished middle classes.

No more those softly-softly local government debt collectors – they have failed abysmally to collect the household charges. This time there would be no slip-ups.

Gentle Josephine, a woman well-practised in extraction, was the business. By the time she had finished her three- hour stint at Thursday’s committee, none of us was in the least doubt. There are only two (albeit extreme) ways out of paying the property tax: emigration or an early grave.

Josephine explained that she would be sending out letters to all 1.6 million house owners on March 11. Watch that date. Ireland will freak with fear when battered house owners are forced to declare the value of their homes.

In reply to questions about residents who undervalued their property, Josephine insisted that the tax authorities presumed honesty from the citizen when tax was by self-assessment.

She did not seem to recognise that many of us will take an opportunistically pessimistic view of the value of our own houses, to enable us to pay a lower sum.

If you do not play ball with her you are in big trouble. In the world of Gentle Josephine there will be no more ducking and diving. Failure to return the forms will result in endless harassment.

Confiscation will be the first line of attack. If you are an employee, you will see your wages slashed by the required amount. If you are on social welfare, your pension or welfare payments will be plundered by the State.

Alternatively, Josephine will order the banks to hand over savings from your current or deposit account. Welcome to stick-up Ireland, the land of fiscal tyranny.

If you are self-employed you will face eventual prosecution. There will be no avoiding the Revenue this time.

Oh well, we will just have to stop paying our mortgages – if we have not done so already.

It was difficult to square this soft, sometimes humorous, woman with the ruthless job that she is destined to do. She had a twinkle in her eye, the sort of bright conversation that would make her a compelling lunch companion. It was easy to envisage some of her silent male comrades starving Saint Peter, but she seemed an unlikely enforcer.

Josephine is paid €200,000 a year – more than her boss Michael Noonan. That probably makes it easier for her to inflict the brutally unfair property tax on middle Ireland. The only reluctance she admitted to feeling about the new task thrust upon her was the enormous disruption it would cause to her other plans.

She is an implementer. Collection of the €250m target in the first half-year would cost about €25.9m.

Prosecutions are big in the armoury of Revenue’s enforcement weapons, yet almost unwanted, according to herself. On property tax, she insisted that prosecution had not yet even entered on to her “radar”. Nor would butter melt in the good woman’s mouth.

Yet prosecutions are often proudly paraded by the Revenue as a tool that they ruthlessly use against rogues. Indeed, the annual report brags about its record of successful prosecutions. Did it not succeed in scoring 1,083 convictions against citizens who had not filed ordinary tax returns in 2011?

Those who fail to fill in their property tax forms will suffer the same fate. The Revenue is very good at prosecuting soft targets for minor offences. Defaulters in the property tax jungle can expect no quarter.

Little fish are fair game. They always have been. The Revenue has form to prove it.

Was it not the same Revenue Commissioners who prosecuted many small, but often naive savers who had moved their savings offshore into non-resident accounts during the Dirt scandal?

Nearly all these petty tax evaders had been introduced to tax dodging by their personal bank managers, their trusted advisers who had persuaded them to take the illegal route.

The small guys were prosecuted, fined, named and shamed. Not a single bank manager was ever brought to book. Many remained in their jobs, untouched for long enough to fuel the mortgage carnage which we are now suffering.

I even asked Josephine how she could justify prosecutions for property tax defaulters when so many Ansbacher account holders (participants in a mammoth Irish tax scam for the rich) had been left unprosecuted by the Revenue. She admitted that not a single Ansbacher account holder had ever seen the inside of a court, pleading that they had been forced to fork out €113m in tax, adding helpfully that €67m of it was in penalties and interest.

Nearly all the Ansbacher account holders, who paid such supposedly huge penalties, are still living high on the hog.

So, why no prosecutions? Ah well , passage of time, burden of proof. . . you know the story.

It doesn’t wash for a moment. In Ireland the big sinners escape, but small sinners suffer.

Josephine sits at the pinnacle of a deeply secret outfit. The Revenue Commissioners business model is unique. It is staffed at the top by a cocoon of insiders, who have been taxmen or taxwomen all their adult life. They live and breathe the unique ethos of probity, righteousness and obedience.

Josephine is not just chief executive. Like Joe Stalin, Josephine is dubbed as “chairman” (sic). She is flanked by a board of just two commissioners.

The troika of commissioners is Kremlinesque. The three oligarchs have no awkward external directors, no inquisitive independent board. There is not even a veneer of scrutiny from disinterested outsiders. The politburo is in total control.

Last Thursday evening I rang the Revenue and asked to whom the three commissioners were accountable. The official answer was that they reported to the Minister for Finance and the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

Last week Gentle Josephine charmed her way through the annual love-in with the PAC. Her only other hurdle is Michael Noonan.

Not only is she doing his dirtiest work for him, but she knows, and he knows, and we know that Josephine will still be in situ when Michael is long gone.

By that time there will be property tax defaulters in Mountjoy prison. And dozens of reckless, retired bankers strolling the streets.