Mr. Simon Carswell:

There was a frenzy to lend to the developers. Perhaps I can give an example. In some instances the banks would approach the borrower asking if he was interested in the land and, if so, the bank would help the borrower to buy it. The developer might be on the radar but may not have been interested until the bank raised the issue. Certain developers aligned themselves with certain banks so that competing race to buy land was very frenetic as the property market was rising. Clearly, at particular points in time, as Anglo's business model was doing so well, the other banks starting coming in. In the period from 2004-07 in particular, there was a marked increase in competition between the banks and the foreign lenders were very actively becoming involved in the property development.