Anglo contacts buyer of Fingleton watch

ANGLO IRISH Bank has written to the former Irish Nationwide employee whom it is believed purchased the retirement watch for former chief executive Michael Fingleton in April 2009 in an attempt to secure more details about the €11,500 gift.

Anglo, which took over Irish Nationwide last month, wrote to the former employee seeking her permission to obtain information about the watch from the shop where the item was purchased.

It has emerged that the watch was actually priced at €13,900 but the former Irish Nationwide employee secured a €2,400 negotiated discount on the item, sources familiar with the purchase said.

Anglo is trying to find out the brand of watch and further details about the cash transaction.

Paul Sheeran Jewellers off Grafton Street in Dublin, where the item was purchased, has declined to provide information to the bank about the watch, citing client confidentiality and saying that they cannot provide details of a purchase to third parties.

Irish Nationwide was not a party to the transaction.

As a result, Anglo has asked the former employee to grant her permission to the jewellers to release information about the watch, which was purchased for Mr Fingleton when he retired after 37 years at the building society.

Lawyers for the bank wrote to the former employee last Friday.

She told The Irish Times that she had nothing to do with the purchase of the watch and that she had no further comment saying that she signed a confidentiality agreement while at Irish Nationwide. An Anglo spokesman also declined to comment.

Paul Sheeran said he could not provide information on the purchase of any item in his shops to anyone other than the purchaser.

“Discretion has always been part of our business,” he said.

“I cannot give any information on any purchaser to anybody else.”

He said that he felt he was being drawn into an internal issue relating to Anglo Irish Bank and that this was a matter for the bank.

Anglo was putting pressure on him to release information about the watch and its lawyers had contacted him about it, he said.

“This is very much an internal Anglo Irish issue – it has nothing to do with Paul Sheeran Jewellers,” he said.

The bank has not received a response from Mr Fingleton to the letter sent by Anglo chief executive Mike Aynsley earlier this month seeking the return of the watch and the €1 million bonus he received in the weeks following the 2008 State bank guarantee.

Speaking earlier this month, Mr Aynsley described Mr Fingleton’s acceptance of an expensive watch as “disgraceful” when Irish Nationwide was guaranteed by the State and financially distressed.

The Government has committed €5.4 billion of State funds to Irish Nationwide to cover heavy losses primarily on property loans.