The Central Bank Commission

The Minister for Finance has appointed the non-executive members of the new Central Bank Commission. The press release is below:

The Minister for Finance, Mr Brian Lenihan, TD, has today appointed five members to the Central Bank Commission with effect from Friday, 1 October.

As provided for in legislation, the terms of office of the first appointees will vary in length in order to ensure that future vacancies on the Commission will be staggered. The appointees and their terms of office are as follows:

Professor John Fitzgerald (5 years)
Mr. Max Watson (5 years)
Mr. Michael Soden (4 years)
Mr. Des Geraghty (4 years)
Professor Blanaid Clarke (3 years)

They will join the ex-officio members: Professor Patrick Honohan (Governor), Mr. Matthew Elderfield (Head of Financial Regulation), Mr. Tony Grimes (Head of Central Banking) and Mr. Kevin Cardiff (Secretary General of the Department of Finance) on the Central Bank Commission.

The Minister said:
“These appointments to the Central Bank Commission will bring a wealth and diversity of talent and experience to the Commission and represents a very significant step in the reform process.”

25 replies on “The Central Bank Commission”

@ Philip

Mike Soden and all his assorted misdeeds – what we’d give for an Irish bank CEO with only those things to complain about…

So, one foreign non-executive member (Watson) plus Elderfield makes two outsiders on the ten-member board. One might have hoped for at least one or two more given Minister Lenihan’s concerns about the smallness of the country. The fact that the non-executive was recently hired by the government to participate in an independent review of our financial crisis might be seen as unfortunate too. Still there’s no denying that over the next while it may prove very useful to have someone with juice at the IMF. Rounding things out we have one academic/quango economist, one legal academic, one Court stalwart and the social partner.

@All

I wish the members of the Central Bank Commission well in setting the standard for corporate governance in the Irish Financial Sector.

one Court stalwart

Sorry, this may be misleading. I’m not aware that Mr. Soden has held any position on the BoI board since resigning as CEO in 2004.

Congratulations to John FitzGerald for his appointment to this Board. He is an excellent choice and will bring a huge wealth of knowledge of the Irish economy to the Commission’s deliberations.

The banking machine for making money and economies of the bubble type is dead, without any supervision, for decades to come.

But perhaps these people can be relied on not to probe what happened as set out in the books of those damned institutions?

Safe pairs of hands, all! Sorry for being so insulting.

Press Statement from the Central Bank

“The Central Bank has assessed the injection of capital needed to meet minimum regulatory requirements under both a base, or central, scenario, taking account of expected losses, and under a severe hypothetical stress scenario.

This assessment has been applied to both the proposed Funding Bank and the Asset Recovery Bank that will be created. The total capital required for both institutions under the base, or expected loss, scenario is €29.3billion.

Under the stress scenario, in the event that unexpected additional losses are incurred, the Central Bank estimates that an additional €5 billion of capital could potentially be required.”

http://www.financialregulator.ie/press-area/press-releases%5CPages%5CPressStatement-AngloIrishBankCapitalCostsandReviewofCapitalRequirementsforIrishBanks.aspx

*LENIHAN SAYS COLM DOHERTY TO DEPART AIB BEFORE END 2010
*LENIHAN: ANGLO SUBORDINATED DEBT HOLDERS WILL SHARE BURDEN
*LENIHAN: AIB CAPITAL REQUIREMENT TO BE MET BY PLACING, OFFER
*LENIHAN: AIB TRANSACTION TO BE FULLY UNDERWRITTEN BY PSN FUND
*LENIHAN: ALLIED IRISH UNLIKELY TO RAISE EXTRA CASH ITSELF

And the “no sh1t Sherlock” statement of the day

*LENIHAN: LIKELY THAT STATE WILL HOLD MAJORITY STAKE IN AIB

And likely State cost of AIB – €3bn plus the shortfall in the €7.4bn capital-raising drive and MTN and AIB UK sales seem to have stalled . So the State will be tapped for what, an additional €3-6bn for AIB?

No word on INBS.

Finality and certainty?

Apparently the news first started coming out in a Lenihan FT interview yesterday evening, and I get the impression that some of the Irish media may have been slow off the mark in noticing and following up. (Surely this wasn’t because of pique on Lenihan’s part?) Lots of unclear bits in the FT coverage, including a statement (still apparently unnoticed by Irish media outlets) which suggests that the transfer of Anglo loans to NAMA is going to be accelerated … or maybe even that some extra assets might go to NAMA, though that seems much less likely. I would quote it, but my FT beans have run out.

@ Jagdip

“Linky”

Nein! It’s on Bloomberg, think it was via an email from lenihan, so assume DoF to put out a formal doc shortly

Having just read Soden’s book “Open Dissent” I am not so sure about the wisdom of his appointment! Especially unhappy about his servitude to the NAMA animal which is tantamount to ownership of assets on a Soviet scale. I notice the people that comply with government policy are still very well rewarded.

@Eoin

Whether texas_hold_em or bridge – in this game I’m under the impression that one stays at the table …. whether ‘all_in’ or ‘vulnerable’ not to play strikes me as very strange ……… or was P Sommerville near accurate last night on V Browne that Executive have little ‘understanding’ of the norms of this game?

Love how Indo tiptoed around Mick Soden’s reasons for leaving BoI “a personal statement”. Do they think if they had given the reason in plain english he might have rejected the job, the country ruined?

Comments are closed.