Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 14 May 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Nexus Phase
Mr. Paul Dobey:
Oh no, there was ... we would have, in 2007, as I mentioned, the big issue facing AIB was the liquidity in relation to its traded credit book, and we had extensive discussions with AIB in relation to that book. And ... the credit markets froze in August 2007, as you're probably aware, and some of these securities that AIB held that were used previously as part of its liquidity now became very difficult to value. Again, we spoke to the regulator about that in late 200... sorry, early 2008, and we looked for additional disclosures in the AIB financial statements, and they were put in. I can think, going back to, on transition to IFRS, we were very involved in the dialogue around what additional disclosures should go in the financial statements, and we would have been looking at, I remember at the time we would look at the RBS financial statements, the National Australia Bank financial statements, the HBOS financial statements, and make sure that best practice was being applied by AIB -so there was an iterative process. And it isn't a case of just, we take the financial statements, we do a two-page audit opinion and we move on. There's a very detailed dialogue around what we believe should go into the financial statements, and our audit findings document with the audit committee would set out those views also.
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