Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 3 September 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Peter Fitzgerald:

Well, through the ALCO committee on which I sat, the bank had internal liquidity ratios, and also then it had regulatory liquidity ratios. So I won't go into the regulatory liquidity ratio now in terms of detail but it basically meant that from a regulatory point of view ... and I think this came in in the middle of ... or the start of 2007, the bank had to hold an amount of liquidity that was able to meet any outflows within 30 days with inflows in 30 days. The bank ... and we then set more stringent internal liquidity ratios, and it's evident in the minutes of the ALCO meetings that the bank actually held its line in terms of liquidity ... regulatory liquidity until ... practically up to the collapse of Lehman's. So, while liquidity was incredibly volatile, yes, the bank was liquid, yes? So it had a lot of liquidity; in fact, we were lenders into the market for quite a period of time. And the liquidity ratios as set by the Central Bank or the Financial Regulator were actually only breached almost September time, when liquidity stress became the most severe. But, obviously, from March right through, we were concerned daily about larger customers pulling credit lines that they had for the bank, ongoing retail worries where people weren't renewing their savings accounts when they hit a one-year maturity, as I described earlier. But, from a liquidity point of view, we were sound until Lehman's, in effect.

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