John McManus, writing in today’s Irish Times, (Sub. required) warns that Dublin’s IFSC is in danger of becoming a financial El Paso. Too late, John, the centre is already well known as the ‘Wild West’ of European finance.
With major understatement, he describes the €17.3 billion hit on a German bank that originated from Ireland’s Wild West as
“A little embarrassing.”
Another report by Derek Scally in the same paper is more hard hitting.
It seems that Germany’s financial regulator, BaFin, is under fire for ignoring warnings in a 2005 report by KPMG that SachsenLB’s Dublin subsidiary was involved in some very dodgy ‘financial juggling’.
One financial expert described the Dublin operation as
“A sloppily-run pig sty”.
Mr. Jochen Sanio, head of Germany’s financial regulator is also under pressure to explain his role in the affair. Bet he wishes he was the Irish regulator, who never explains anything.
Germany’s taxpayers will be none too pleased either on hearing that they will be picking up the €17.3 million tab, essentially, as a result of the ‘anything goes’ attitude of the Irish Financial Regulator.