Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 23 April 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Nexus Phase
Mr. Donal Forde:
Yes. I think ... I make the point I think, in my statement, that in my last act, if I can express it in those terms, of the MD of the division, was that the chief executive has asked me to do a very rigorous assessment of what the scale of loan losses could be. This was in late January, early February of '09. And I did that at the time and I did it ... that was ... that was done in close collaboration with the chief credit officer and the risk executives. And the product of that was, at that time, to suggest that the loan losses could be of the order of €2 billion to €3 billion. That was my last picture of the division before I, in a sense, stepped aside. Now that would have not led to that order of capital requirement that subsequently came. Now things deteriorated so quickly and so sharply after that, that from one month to another the situation changed, so I can understand how ... I mean, at that stage ... I recall when that was being done, the worry and the concern from a credit point of view was that houses weren't selling, sales of completed office developments had stopped. The worry was not so much about the fall in value as it was about the suspension of economic activity. At that stage values were back ... house values were back 25%. Clearly from then, to a period 12 months later, things changed very dramatically. So, if you'll forgive me, I think asking me whether something, an evaluation of the loan portfolio, was done in February or done in April is very material given what was happening. And the last one I saw was what was done in late January and February and that was the product of it.
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