Compiled by CAROLINE MADDEN

Putting a price on Ronaldo

THIS IS a big week on the European front – today the International Monetary Fund is due to deliver its verdict on the Spanish banking system.

Back in April, in an interim report, the IMF called on Spain to deepen its reform of the sector and clean up weak institutions quickly. In the meantime Bankia, the country’s fourth largest bank, asked the State for a €19 billion bailout.

While those suffering from banking crisis fatigue may be more concerned about the outcome of Ireland’s match against Spain this week, football fans have more reason to be directly concerned with Bankia’s fate than it might appear at first glance.

According to reports in the Telegraph and elsewhere, the most expensive footballer in history, Cristiano Ronaldo, could wind up becoming ECB property as a result of the bank’s mismanagement.

Back in 2009, Bankia lent Real Madrid €76.5 million to finance transfer fees for both Ronaldo and Kaká. It emerged recently that the bank has pledged the Portuguese winger and the Brazilian forward as collateral with the ECB in return for emergency liquidity support.

If Bankia becomes insolvent and Real were to default on its loan, the ECB could theoretically end up owning both players.

Ronaldo may be flattered to know that this loan was triple-A rated by Moody’s. However, if the ECB starts trying to impose haircuts, it could have a battle on its hands from the well-groomed Galáctico.

Eircom's cautionary tale

THANKS TO the skills of Mr Justice Peter Kelly and examiner Michael McAteer (and a not inconsiderable number of advisers whose total bill is expected to run to tens of millions of euros), the largest corporate insolvency case in the history of the State has been resolved with admirable efficiency.

Just 53 days into a process that can run for up to 100 days, the judge approved Mr McAteer’s five-year survival scheme for Eircom, which went into examinership in March.

Today, the beleaguered telco will formally come out the other side of that examinership process, with a radically reduced debt burden and the chance to turn over a fresh leaf.

It remains to be seen whether the debt reduction of 40 per cent will prove sufficient, but hopefully the company, which has been repeatedly stripped and flipped – not to mention loaded with debt – since being privatised in 1999, will avoid the gimlet eye of corporate asset-strippers from here on in.

Can as much be said for those State assets which the Government (egged on by the troika) is currently eyeing up for privatisation?

Hopefully, the mandarins on Kildare Street will keep the cautionary tale that is Eircom to the front of their minds when it comes to flogging off the family silver.

Europe braces itself as Greece votes

EUROPE WILL hold its breath this Sunday when the Greek people return to the polls.

The elections, the second in two months, are considered by many to be a referendum on whether the country should remain in the euro zone and plough on with painful austerity measures, or go back to the drachma.

The opinion polls have been contradictory, indicating that the voters are closely divided between the pro- and anti-austerity parties and that the election could go either way.

However, pressure is mounting on anti-austerity parties to honour the debt-laden country’s commitments to the troika, with a group of 11 Greek economists based around the world adding their voices to warnings that a Greek euro zone exit could be disastrous for the country.

The economists fired a warning shot across the boughs of the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) campaign, whose leader Alexis Tsipras claims he will repeal the troika deal but keep Greece in the euro zone.

Critics say that these two claims are mutually exclusive. “We would not like to see ignorance and populism lead the country to disastrous and irreversible choices,” the economists warned in an open letter to the Greek newspaper, Kathimerini.