Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 8 July 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Brian Cowen:

Yes well, as I understand it the ... that was about increasing capital in the banks because of the fact that the market expected capital ratios to be higher than had been the case during less turbulent times. And those discussions took place between Department of Finance people, Brian Lenihan may have been directly involved, I can't recall, and the banks themselves. That was regarded as being not, we're not saying when that initial capitalisation was made that that's all that was ever required, although at that point it looked like it might be all they ever required, because you didn't know until you actually got into this question of loans and getting the NAMA process going. And it didn't seem to me, or else they were very much in denial, it didn't seem to me that they thought that they were in that sort of trouble either. So, I think what was, I was reading some transcript here, it may have been Mr. Cardiff, who would be au faitwith the logistics of this thing, that they agreed on €3.5 billion each between both banks in order to show parity between the two of them even though Bank of Ireland could have taken three and the others could have taken four. So AIB insisted on €3.5 billion as being sufficient. So that's just the detail.

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