Cologne Re belies McCreevy attitude to rules

Business Opinion: It is a good job for the European taxpayer that Charlie McCreevy is not paid by the word. In the last week or so the single market commissioner has aired his views on subjects as diverse as: international accounting standards; cross border bank mergers; one-shareholder one-vote; French protectionism; the need for more leadership in the EU; and the case for economic liberalism.

From the Irish perspective, his most interesting remarks were those delivered last Monday in a well flagged speech on regulation. In it the single market commissioner nailed his colours to the mast when it came to the topic of regulatory balance.

"Many of us in this room are from the generations that had the luck to grow up before governments got working and lawyers got rich on regulating our lives. We were part of the "unregulated generation" - the generation that has produced some of the best risk takers, problem solvers, and inventors. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility and we learnt how to deal with them all," he told the audience of regulators assembled at the Central Bank.

He then went on to appeal to them "to give due weight to the need to strike the right balance between prudential and investor protection considerations and the need for competitiveness and innovation in financial services.

" Don't try to protect everyone from every possible accident. Concentrate on the big things that really matter. And leave industry with the space to breathe and investors with the freedom to learn from their mistakes," he implored.

The response of the assembled regulators was not recorded. But the speech closely echoed a recent speech by Seán FitzPatrick of Anglo Irish Bank to a group of property developers which went down a bomb.

FitzPatrick warned that "the pronounced moves towards greater control and regulation could squeeze the life out of an economy that has thrived on intuition, imagination and a spirit of adventure.

"What has been done here over the past decade that demands such a reaction? Where is the line-up of failed companies with shareholders who have been ripped-off and left bemoaning the lack of due care and attention by feckless directors?" asked FitzPatrick before neatly sidestepping the most obvious answer to his question, namely the Dirt scandal.

The fact that this issue was dealt with within the existing laws only served to highlight the adequacy of the current regulatory regime, he argued.

The case being put forward by FitzPatrick - and to an extent by McCreevy - is that when you take all the various corporate and other transgressions that have taken place or come to light over the past two decades and put them up against the economic progress that has been achieved, they pale into insignificance.

Part of this argument seems to be that the buccaneering spirit that gave us Ansbacher, Dirt and all of that, is also the source of Ireland's economic renaissance. It follows then that by stamping out this "wild west anything goes" mentality we are in danger of stifling the very thing that rescued us from economic oblivion.

Its is not altogether surprising to hear such a proposition from Seán FitzPatrick. He is one of the most successful businessmen of the period to which he refers. In addition he holds a brief for no-one and as a private citizen is entitled to make a case for the forced annexation of Rockall, never mind a more hands-off approach to regulation, should he want to.

It is a far more worrying thing to hear it from a European commissioner, even one as generous with his opinions as McCreevy. As things turned out the naivety of his proposition was quickly illustrated.

Four days after his appeal for a return to the good old days of the "unregulated generation" this newspaper reported on the latest developments at Cologne Re, the IFSC company at the centre of international investigations into malpractice in the reinsurance sector.

The company's 2004 accounts, which were signed off on a few weeks ago, reveal that it has stopped taking new business and set aside €10 million to cover legal and other fees related to the investigations. According to the accounts it is being investigated by the Financial Services Authority in the UK as well as the Irish regulators.

At the heart of these investigations is the misuse of insurance products to bolster the balance sheets of large insurers. The former chief executive of Cologne Re's Dublin unit, John Houldsworth, pleaded guilty in the US last June to a criminal charge of conspiring with others to use such transactions to mis-state certain financial statements made by US insurance giant AIG.

Houldsworth's views on the correct approach to regulation are unknown at this juncture, but one suspects he would be siding with McCreevy and FitzPatrick on the issue.