A man, a bank and an arrest

FITZPATRICK PROFILE:SEAN FITZPATRICK resigned as chairman of Anglo Irish Bank in December 2008 after he admitted moving loans of up to €122 million temporarily out of the bank every year for eight years, hiding them from shareholders and the public.

His departure from Anglo and his simultaneous resignations from the boards of Aer Lingus and Smurfit Kappa marked the end of a distinguished corporate career.

His resignation was followed by that of the bank’s chief executive, David Drumm, exacerbating market volatility around Anglo and culminating in the Government taking control of the bank a month later. The State has sunk €4 billion of taxpayers’ money into Anglo to cover spiralling losses on loans to developers and the property sector which had made Anglo so profitable during the boom.

Mr FitzPatrick’s relationship with Anglo dates back to the 1980s. He became chief executive after the City of Dublin Bank was renamed Anglo Irish Bank in 1986.

A chartered accountant, he remained chief executive until January 2005 when he was succeeded by Mr Drumm and he became chairman. Under their stewardship, Anglo recorded a surge in lending, trebling loans in just four years to €72 billion by September 2008 as Anglo became heavily exposed to property developers and investors.

They developed Anglo’s reputation as a financier of big deals in the building and corporate sectors in the Celtic Tiger era, enjoying the spoils as annual profits peaked at €1.2 billion in September 2007.

Mr FitzPatrick (61) was paid fees of €539,000 in his last year as chairman. He received pay of €2.7 million in the year to September 2004, his last as chief executive.

The collapse of the property market has erased Anglo’s capital. The bank will report losses of almost €12 billion for the 15 months to the end of 2009 due to further bad debts, mostly on about €36 billion of loans being transferred to the National Asset Management Agency (Nama). It is estimated the bank will require a further €6 billion in Government capital to keep it afloat.

Mr FitzPatrick helped drive the bank’s net worth increase from €5 million in 1985 to €13.3 billion in 2007 when the bank’s stock peaked, only to see nationalisation wipe this out. It has left Mr FitzPatrick’s stake in the bank – about €80 million at its peak – virtually worthless. His former bank issued a lawsuit against him last week seeking repayment of €70 million in loans. His arrest at his home in Greystones, Co Wicklow, comes over a year after the Garda and the Director of Corporate Enforcement began investigating Anglo.