Dublin’s role as global finance’s “Wild West” under spotlight after Russian bank colllapse https://t.co/bdccBMF4em pic.twitter.com/BClGvxks1F
— Ian Fraser (@Ian_Fraser) February 24, 2016
Oh.
Based in a drab office building in Dublin down the road from a pub frequented by Prime Minister Enda Kenny, VPB Funding Ltd. had no employees but one function: selling bonds. In 2013, it issued $225 million of unsecured notes.
The proceeds of that sale were funneled to Vneshprombank Ltd., a Moscow lender whose license was revoked last month when Russian authorities accused management of pilfering its assets and falsifying accounts. VPB’s notes have plunged to pennies on the dollar.
The entanglement of an obscure Dublin firm in the woes of a lender 2,000 miles away shows why Irish officials have begun shining a light on special purpose vehicles like VPB, unregulated entities that borrow on behalf of corporations throughout the world.
The Irish capital, home of Europe’s costliest banking meltdown, remains a hub for the sort of opaque operations that contributed to the global financial crisis, threatening risks that policy makers are seeking to stamp out.
Russian Bank Collapse Shines Light on Risks in Irish Shadows (Bloomberg)
Thanks Rory
Meanwhile…
So, we don’t do brass plate companies in our country. So you have a plate…Apple employ 5,000 people, who go to work everyday. Obviously if you manufacture something there and you sell it in France or Italy, the intellectual property is invested elsewhere, these are the complexities and the challenges that are there.”
Enda kenny speaking at Davos in January
ah, the place that John Bruton doesn’t want any regulation for, or maybe it’s just goldman sachs telling john what they want, either way when people wonder where did the trillions of QE go to, be well advised that the IFSC has facilitated in the movements of such money..
Good film a few years old now called “boiler room” ****
? That’s about unscrupulous stock brokers selling penny stocks to greenhorns
How has it relevance to a brass plate bond bank?
Just checked google maps, It’s not just down the road from a pub, it’s beside his apartment!!!!
Care to give more specific info?
you’re not able to use google huh?
Randomer provides random information and when asked to verify basically says FO. Your credibility is flying high tonight mate.
lol
Frankly, Ireland shouldn’t give a damn about the shadow banking sector unless it’s her own banks engaging in it. Ireland acts as a hub for this sort of activity, and it should be up to the broader European/International supervisory community to do something about it.
I would be far more worried about the size of the banking assets to GDP, where we match roughly speaking Switzerland and have a higher ratio than Italy, Netherlands, Germany etc.
Banking assets are what the Irish taxpayer will ultimately be on the hook for, therefore it is the Irish supervisors responsibility to ensure as few of those assets as possible are invested in the liabilities of the shadow banks.
We are the Cayman islands of Europe… Is that what I’m reading?
Sincerely,
Puzzled from Norwich
Its truce that banks should perform their own due diligence before engaging spvs but I wonder should the cro conduct such diligence on the spv if it’s incorporated here?
On re reading there was probably nothing to indicate any concerns prior to the Russian authorities investigation.
Suppose it goes back to caveat emptor, if you’re Finns buy bonds make sure they’re not from Russia!
We will not be on the hook for non-Irish HQ’d finance firms, it will be the country of origin who will have to deal with it (ie a Russian finance firm is considered Russia’s problem, ditto all of the German landesbanks that got into trouble during the crisis).
As such, we do not actually care that much about the assets of these entities. We care about the liabilities, ie their creditors such as bondholders, equity holders, depositors etc. And again, all of the liabilities tend to be international in nature. So this issue is one more about reputation rather than money/cost of collapse.
No brass plate companies, me b0££ick$
BAE, the giant UK arms company has a brass plate company in Dublin that was set up as a Homeless Charity – they ‘donate’ any surplus to homelessness, yet magically, their ‘costs’ always perfectly match the revenue funnelled through it, so unluckily they’ve never had any surplus to help the homeless.
Arbutus Homeless Person’s Trust is run by Goodbody Trustees Limited, a company set up by A&L Goodbody, a well-known law firm in Dublin. The trust was set up in 1997,” according to BAe.
The indo reported on it a few years back, several years after the FT had mentioned it in a large feature.
Hence the need for the charities regulator!! Haven’t heard much since it was set up, I would hope this type of issue would be a priority
I heard a trickle of stuff a couple of weeks ago – a Donegal charity with five or six separate bank accounts or something? I would imagine it’s an underfunded, slow but steady kind of regulator.
Might send in my cv
Ah good old A&L Goodbody …… the irony of that name …… they are the ones who looked after the stunt pulled on the Clerys workers ….. Lest we forget ….
a great little country to do business…… of screwing the poor and profiting the rich