Results 9,181-9,200 of 21,149 for speaker:Mary Lou McDonald

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: No, it is the political sensitivity of protecting taxpayers' money. I will return to it in the second round, as I wish to conclude with this. Cerberus, at the highest level, met senior NAMA executives and the Minister for Finance on 31 March, a day before its bid was submitted. What does Mr. Long have to say about that? Was he aware that the meeting took place?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: Did Fortress similarly meet Mr. Frank Daly and Mr. McDonagh of NAMA and the Minister? Was it afforded the same meeting?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: Did it have such a meeting?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: Who organised that meeting between Cerberus and the people concerned? Does the witness know?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: A sum of £7.5 million ended up in a bank account, let us put it that way.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: The Lazard website refers to insight, judgment and performance as its calling cards. Is that correct?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: Is Mr. Long angry that NAMA misled him and kept him in the dark?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: I am referring to PIMCO’s exit from the process.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: How does Lazard keep itself on the right side of the law? I am sure because it read the report that PIMCO approached NAMA with concerns about the law and compliance with the law here and in Britain. I have a sense that we are discussing the fees which Mr. Long says are standard and we are missing-----

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: I mean the success fees. We are missing the point that the concern that PIMCO had was not just that this was not appropriate but that it was potentially illegal. As the loan sales adviser, how did Mr. Long ensure that the law was not broken? I am very surprised that Mr. Long is so mild in his response to NAMA and the fact, as it seems to me, that he was deliberately kept in the dark. It...

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: Lazard is a large organisation and Mr. Long is an experienced and respected professional. How is it that Lazard entered into a transaction of this nature? Given the amount of money involved and the potentially large profit to be made, I would have thought Lazard would have sought watertight assurances that it was acting in an environment of compliance.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: So Lazard was made aware of that information but it was not made aware of the fact that there had been potential breaches in the PIMCO arrangement.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: Sorry, is Mr. Long confirming that that is how it happened?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: Mr. Long harbours no professional angst at the fact that NAMA kept that information from him.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: In terms of "what ifs" if PIMCO had not approached NAMA and this had just sailed through Lazard would have been a party to something outside of the regulation and the law potentially.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: I am very concerned because much of the conversation around this report from the Comptroller and Auditor General, NAMA's response and all of the debate has been anchored in an idea of reputational damage.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: The concern is for any reputational damage to the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General, which as Mr. Long is aware is a constitutional office. There is also a lot of angst in respect of reputational damage to NAMA. I put it to Mr. Long as the representative of Lazard that reputational damage accrues to himself also. With the greatest of respect to Mr. Long far from demonstrating...

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: I thought as much.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: For the purposes of clarity for the general public, let us set out what happened. Lazard secured this gig with no tender, which was strange. Lazard received a verbal briefing from Ronnie Hanna in which it was told about political sensitivities and so on. It had no role in valuation. It did not control the data room: that fell to NAMA. The whole process then became very complicated and...

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (22 Nov 2016)

Mary Lou McDonald: Let me come at this in a different way. I ask Mr. Long to pull up paragraph 4.17 of the report on his screen. In regard to the arrangement between Lazard and NAMA and the confidentiality which Mr. Long has referenced several times, it states that potential bidders were to be prohibited from contacting the debtors. In other words, there was to be a Chinese wall in terms of debtor...