STILL IN place, still at the top

[Andrew49]

The former non-executive directors of Anglo Irish Bank continue to hold high-ranking positions in many of the biggest and most prestigious Irish companies, some owned by the State, some with important regulatory and legal functions, others heavily indebted.

Gary McGann - Dublin Airport Authority

Anne Heraty - Bord na Móna. She is also on the board of Forfás, Ms Heraty is also on the board of the Irish Stock Exchange, prime regulator of the Irish equities market.

Ned Sullivan, chairman of three major companies. One of those, Eircom, has debts exceeding €3.7 billion. Chairman of listed food company Greencore, He also chairs McInerney, the house-builder.

Michael Jacob sits on several other boards, among them Dolmen stockbrokers.

Lar Bradshaw, is chairman of Aras Healthcare group.

These people were present at Anglo’s demise, a collapse that still endangers the entire Irish banking system. Would they retain these directorships in any other Western country?

Link

[jpc]

The golden circle is a term for a much bigger issue.
The patronage system endemic through Irish public/business life.

[Digout]

We need a complete clean out of everything. I am not convinced the blueshirts will do this.

[Thranduil]

The movie Wallstreet warned all of us laypersons about this way of doing business 20 years ago. These people can make companies seem profitable, can generate illusionary wealth based on market fluctuations and the way reality has a sadly slow way of catching up with markets, pyramid schemes built on hot air. Phony wealth turned into real wealth now that people realise the games they were playing were being played in a casino that shared space with an actual banking business... that was too big to fail.

These people were present at Anglo’s demise, a collapse that still endangers the entire Irish banking system. Would they retain these directorships in any other Western country?

How did they fail? They generated dodgy business at Anglo and the dodginess of that business was not allowed to collapse in the expected Darwinian sense but was upheld by the state, stroke of business genius if you ask me. And no, we are not alone in that sense....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...crisis-bonuses

The theory behind the colossal growth in executive compensation was to tie pay to performance; more precisely to align executive interests to those of shareholders. But the compensation plans rewarded reckless behaviour by encouraging leverage through the use of exotic financial engineering products that obscured risk and turned sub-prime loans into triple-A rated securities. This may work when everything is going well, but even the frothiest markets have shown themselves to be subject to the laws of gravity. The profits that justified their big bonuses were evanescent at best and delusional at worst.

At least they were delusional, till the bail out.

This situation was carefully encouraged in the US and UK - you might say it was the objective of many people in power to make it happen - it was not a 'natural' disaster. The fault lies with those given the task of regulating business practices, of providing security measures against reckless financial behaviour and in protecting taxpayers and the overall economy, if i leave my wallet in the middle of the street i am partially responsible when it is stolen - that is what our political masters have done. It is not the 'thief''s fault and in this case he wasn't really a thief at all because he was acting within the rules such as they were. So these execs will go on, clever people they all are and they are winners at the casino nonetheless, other corporations might want such clever people working for them too.