Irish Nationwide structure allowed Fingleton great autonomy

Michael Fingleton, or "Fingers" as he was often known, was one of the best-known chief executives in Irish business for almost four decades.

He ran Irish Nationwide Building Society (INBS) from 1971 until he stepped down in early 2009, after it emerged that the bank lost €464 million in bad property loans the previous year, leaving it €280 million in the red. By 2010, its losses had ballooned to €6 billion.

INBS received €5.4 billion in taxpayers' money to bail it out. It was ultimately folded into the State-owned Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC), along with the much larger Anglo Irish Bank, which was then wound up in early 2013.

IBRC's liquidators, Kieran Wallace and Eamonn Richardson of KPMG, are taking legal action against Fingleton, claiming his failure to properly carry out his duties as a director of the bank caused, or contributed to, its losses.

In 2013 the Commercial Court heard that INBS had an unusual management structure. The lender’s board delegated all of its powers by resolution to Fingleton, giving him significant autonomy on lending and decision-making.

Controversy

The former banking boss often courted the media and was no stranger to controversy throughout his career, but he attracted huge publicity as it came to an end.

In 2009 Fingleton agreed to repay a €1 million bonus INBS had paid him the previous November. This was just two months after the government agreed to guarantee the banks, a move that ultimately led to the EU and IMF bailing out the State itself.

At the time he agreed to do this, the government was attempting to stamp out the practice of banks paying hefty bonuses to executives and senior management that were supposedly tied to performance. However, while he pledged to repay the cash, he never did so.

Shortly after the row over his bonus, INBS confirmed it had put in place a €27.6 million pension fund for Fingleton, which he managed and which had been transferred out of the financial institution in January 2007.

While the INBS was in name a building society, which generally operate by giving mortgages to savers or members who have accounts with them, under Fingleton’s leadership, it provided commercial property loans in much the same way as a conventional bank.

Big player

It was a big player in commercial property lending in the years leading up to the financial crisis and collapse of Ireland’s banking system in 2008. According to a

Central Bank

statement issued last month, its commercial loans grew by €5.6 billion to €8.2 billion from 2004-2008.

When the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) bought those loans in 2010, they were the most-heavily discounted of the debts it purchased from the five banks rescued under the scheme, indicating the properties against which they were secured were the most worthless.