Írar eru að upplifa mörg sömu vandamál og Íslendingar.Samkvæmt þessari frétt úr Financial Times ætla þeir að skera upp herör gegn krosseignarhaldi, einkavinakapítalisma og óeðlilegum lánveitingum – auk þess sem fjármálaeftirlit verður endurskipulagt. Takið eftir að í greininni er talað um „incestuous relationships“ – blóðskömm eða sifjaspell í viðskiptalifinu – þetta eru hugtök sem ég hef oft gripið til vegna fjármálahrunsins á Íslandi
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Ireland plans crackdown on crony capitalism
By Quentin Peel and Lionel Barber
Published: March 17 2009 00:40 | Last updated: March 17 2009 09:09
Ireland is planning to introduce tough legislation to clamp down on
crony capitalism and excess bank lending in the wake of the property
bubble that has hammered its leading banks, Brian Lenihan, finance
minister, told the Financial Times on Monday night.
The measures will include a ban on cross-directorships and on chief
executives becoming chairmen, as well as the creation of a central bank
commission to incorporate the regulation of banking, to replace the
present autonomous regulator.
“There is a problem in all small countries with too many incestuous
relationships,” Mr Lenihan said. “We have decided to establish a central
bank commission which will have comprehensive regulatory as well as
monitoring powers, and will have the power to direct restrictions on
lending.”
He said he would submit a memorandum to the Irish cabinet next week on
the measures, and advertise for a bank regulator in the near future.
The planned Irish move is a response to the damaging scandal that hit
Anglo Irish Bank, when it was revealed in December that Sean
FitzPatrick, a long-time chief executive who moved to become chairman in
2005, had hidden €87m (£80m, $112m) of personal loans from the bank’s
auditors by temporarily transferring the amounts to an Irish building
society just before the year-end. Mr FitzPatrick resigned along with
other board members.
The bank was nationalised in January and is now the subject of
investigations by the director of corporate enforcement, the regulator
and the Irish central bank. With bad loan losses set to increase across
the industry, Mr Lenihan was keen to reject any suggestion that deposits
in Irish banks are not safe, insisting that “we have [the European
Central Bank in] Frankfurt behind us rather than the Bank of England,
which makes them super-safe”.
Membership of the eurozone “has the great benefit of ensuring the
stability of the monetary, financial and banking system”, he said. “But
the price is the higher exchange rate against sterling. The damage is
coming through the real economy.”
Mr Lenihan, who was appointed finance minister last year to succeed
Brian Cowen when he became prime minister, said the Irish economy had
“fallen off a cliff” because of the “classic property bubble”, with
growth dropping from 6 per cent in 2007 to minus 1 per cent last year,
and a forecast minus 6.5 per cent in 2009.
