Results 11,201-11,220 of 15,555 for speaker:Eoghan Murphy
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (21 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: Yes, the fears that the-----
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (21 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: It is my question Chair.
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (21 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: Yes but one final element to it. In March 2008 that discussion is happening at the DSG. Did you approach the banks individually to ask them to support each other with funding, referring it to as the green jersey agenda?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (20 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: Thank you, Chairman, and thank you to both the witnesses. The reference for my question, Chairman, is at pages 37 to 40 in the core booklet. But before I come to that I just wanted to go back, Mr. McDonnell, to something you were speaking about earlier in relation to PwC and the dedicated banking unit that you have. Was this unique amongst audit firms at the time?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (20 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: Is that still the case?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (20 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: Okay. And within that unit you had, you said, the specialist banking, retail banking, treasury teams. But did you ever consider a specialist property lending team?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (20 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: But no one with a particular focus on, say, property?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (20 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: Component.
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (20 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: Okay. And when the bank began to change its internal structures at the beginning of 2001, specialist property financing units, and then in 2004, a dedicated property unit, was there a discussion in PwC about changing how you might audit the bank's activities?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (20 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: So your concern would have been that you have the necessary expertise to audit what the bank was doing - not necessarily a concern with the additional risk the bank may or may not been taking on?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (20 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: So it wouldn't have been your responsibility to comment to the bank itself but would people ... in your ... inside your expert team looking at banks and looking at Bank of Ireland, would they have been commenting to themselves or to senior partners about what was happening in the bank ... and the changes that were happening, the increases in ... say ... concentration in property lending?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (20 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: Okay but in terms of ... have you looked at documentation from the time internal to PwC?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (20 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: And would there be documentation, e-mails for example, of people on the bank team discussing their own concerns as to strategies being pursued by the banks, separate to their role as an auditor to the bank and the risk that they might be concerned with in terms of auditing?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (20 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: Okay. The document I cited is a document from the group risk office to the group risk policy committee on 13 December 2007 and it's talking about property concentration in the group's loan book. So as part of your audit, does it concern itself with these types of documents?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (20 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: Right, but to what purpose did you look at the minutes, say, for example, in these minutes, where it expresses a number of concerns about exposures?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (20 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: Impairment at that point in time, not in future impairment risks?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (20 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: Okay. This document then from the group risk policy committee or to the group risk policy committee, it's the end of 2007, and it's noting that 44% of all non-mortgage lending is to property. And when you combine mortgage lending with property construction lending, it's 70% of the bank's entire loans. So did PwC ever analyse the risk level associated with the percentage share of the...
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (20 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: Yes ... it's the two figures together.
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (20 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: What about the wider concern, though, that's been expressed internally about this exposure ... this concentration exposure? I mean, if you go to page 40, half-way down the page it states, "If the GRPC [Group Risk Policy Committee] is of the view that the level of property exposure in the Group's balance sheet is too high, there are relatively few realistic options that could be considered",...
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (20 May 2015)
Eoghan Murphy: But as it says here, if the exposure is too high and there are relatively few realistic options that could be considered. You as PwC cannot take a view on that in terms of your assessment of the bank's position.