Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 6 May 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Richie Boucher:

Balance sheets can't be mark-to-market, because they change the whole time. When you're selling assets you're obviously selling on a mark-to-market and you recognise that. So in our disclosures to the market, Chairman, we had a very significant responsibility, in particular because people were buying and selling the shares, that we were still a public company, but also we were raising capital, so we had to make our best estimate of what we thought the cost of NAMA would be. So we showed in our accounts on a provisioning policy and then we disclosed to the market. We had to get permission from our shareholders, where we said we thought, based on our understanding of the models, so I was chief executive at the time, I pulled in people from all parts of our group, in particular people who understood securitisations, like, you know, we had quite a lot of experience, unfortunately too much experience in doing too much securitisation, but we had kept those skills. So we were able to tell the shareholders, when they were voting for NAMA, when they were trading our shares, and when they decided to invest in the company, what we thought was the best estimate of the absolute loss the bank would face by participation in NAMA. We gave a range, we gave a range between €4.2 billion and €4.8 billion. We said it depended on the absolute quantum of the loans transferred. But we had a pretty good understanding of the mark-to-market model that NAMA was operating, and-----