Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 24 June 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Kevin Cardiff:

Well, I have slightly the advantage of you, Deputy, because I was also talking to the Goldman Sachs people at the time and I know what they were saying as their sort of general view. First of all, if you mark-to-market ... remember, a bank typically earns ... I don't know, a few per cent on a loan. In fact, it earns the difference between the few per cent they pay to the depositor and the few extra per cent that it gets on the loan. So, it's working on a return of, you know, a net return of a margin of a couple of per cent on any given loan. Now, if you take that loan and you sell it into the market, which is what a mark-to-market approach would do, then you're selling it to people who are looking for a return of maybe 10% or 12% or 15%. So, the market value of that loan will be ... could be quite heavily discounted relative to what the value it would be on the bank's books and the banks assume, generally speaking, unless things have changed very radically, they assume that over time, they will hold that loan over time and they will get the full payment in the end less whatever provision they might make for the likelihood of a default and the amount they get on default. So, the mark-to-market value would be quite different from the going concern value for a bank that is in ongoing mode. Now, at the end of, you know, in the week before 29 September 2008 just to be clear, we spoke to Goldman Sachs and they were saying, "Well, look actually the loan book may be not quite so bad as we had initially thought it might be and that, in fact, over time, they might just trade through all this, they could trade through all this without actually burning through all their capital, assuming they are allowed to trade through." That was the difference in the assumption, I suppose, assuming allowed to trade through, they were saying, "Not, on that basis, insolvent."