Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 2 April 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Context Phase

Mr. John Moran:

That advice would have been delivered to what I would regard as our core client base, which would have been the pension funds and life assurance companies. We, as a firm, did not have an enormous involvement in the private investor market. We were considered, and probably still are, the institutional firm in town, for want of a better expression.

Most of them adhered to our advice. Some 90% of the buying activity at that time was private investor led. Quite frankly, it was stoked by a lot of people. Private syndicators were making a great deal of money out of it so it was in their interests to try to continue to push property acquisition and investment as an asset class.