Quinn vows to pay €2.8bn debt

The founder of the Quinn Group has tonight admitted he made a mistake in buying shares in Anglo Irish Bank but said he has a plan to repay the €2.8 billion he owes without having to split up the group.

In an interview broadcast on RTÉ Primetime this evening, Sean Quinn also denied having any knowledge of the so-called "Anglo Ten", a group of ten clients who were lent €451 million to buy a 10 per cent stake in Anglo from Mr Quinn in the summer of 2008 in order to support its share price.

Mr Quinn said this evening that purchasing shares in Anglo Irish Bank had led to problems for the group he was head of until stepping down from the board last month. He said he would not like to see staff at Quinn Insurance losing their jobs because of his mistake.

“It probably comes down to a mistake I made in buying shares, but that’s where it lands. The staff have been very loyal to me for the last thirty odd years, and I would feel very bad about the fact that so many of them are being laid off," he said.

" I mean if they were being laid off because they were losing money, then I could understand it. They’re laid off by the most profitable insurance company in Ireland for ten consecutive years, margin-wise, and to be laid off by the most profitable insurer in Ireland, when you’re laid off because Sean Quinn, the chairman lost three billion in shares, it’s tough, it’s tough,” he added.

Quinn Insurance is now under the control of administrators after it was found to have broken solvency rules imposed by the State's financial regulator. On April 30th, the administrators announced their intention to make 900 staff redundant at Quinn Insurance to help restore the business to profitability.

The Quinn family owe €2.8 billion to Anglo relating to their disastrous stake-building in the now-nationalised bank. The Quinns owned as much as 28 per cent of Anglo at one point, having built their shareholding through contracts for difference (CFDs), which did not require them to reveal their stakebuilding.

During tonight's interview Mr Quinn insisted he had a plan to repay the €2.8 billion debt which could be secured through selling off property and through Quinn Direct. He insisted the debt could be repaid without splitting up the Quinn Group or costing the taxpayer.

“What we would like to see is two things. Firstly the profits of that enterprise go to the reduction of the Anglo debt, one hundred per cent of it. The second thing we’d like to see is that the jobs would continue to stay in rural Ireland, as many as possible," he said.

"The jobs we’ve established in Cavan, our head office – we’d like to think that the new arrangement if it was accepted would continue to be our head office. And that it clears all the debt. In seven years time we have a projection to 2017, we would have enough profit made in the meantime, plus the value of the company in seven years time would clear a hundred per cent of the debt,” he added.

Mr Quinn said this evening that he had not been interviewed in connection with the ongoing investigation into Anglo Irish Bank. He also claimed to have no awareness about the so-called 'Anglo-Ten' deal.

"I’m not going into that whole scene. All I can tell you is that we didn’t do anything wrong with Anglo or anybody else. We admitted that we had taken money out of Quinn Direct which we shouldn’t have. We took €800 million that was authorised, we took €288 million that wasn’t authorised. I paid the price for that and I resigned,” said Mr Quinn.