Thanks to George Lee for passing on this material: A set of parliamentary answers to enquiries about the economics qualifications of civil servants in various Irish government departments.
Author: Karl Whelan
I noted a few days ago that the government’s justification for the U-turn on pay cuts for senior civil servants was to cite the international benchmarking carried out for the Review Body report that recommended the cuts in the first place. This seemed an unsatisfactory defence of this controversial decision.
Yesterday in the Dail, the Tanaiste put forward a new justification for the decision (link to Dail transcript here). The Tanaiste said “With regard to the pay and conditions of assistant secretaries, the review body on higher level pay indicated that the bonus was indicatively part of their salary.”
If I understand the argument correctly, the Tanaiste is saying that the Review Body’s report indicated that the salary that it was recommending be cut included the bonuses, in which case the government was not actually implementing the report’s recommendations in the first place but that policy was now consistent with the report because of the U-turn.
Well, here’s the Review Body’s report. It’s not that long and I’ve read it a couple of times. And as far as I can see, the Tanaiste’s claim is, well (… looking for polite term for it) not correct. I can’t find anywhere in the report where it says that the bonus was explicitly, implicitly, or, indeed, indicatively included in the baseline salary recommended to be cut.
In fact, there’s pretty solid evidence that the Review Body was explicitly excluding bonuses from the salaries being considered: The “current rate” salaries cited on page 5 of the report are base salaries excluding bonuses. This doesn’t seem to leave much room for the idea that the Review Body was including bonuses as part of the salary to be cut, whether indicatively or otherwise.
Is it really too much to ask for a for a simple and honest explanation for this decision, i.e. one that doesn’t rely on misrepresenting the report that recommended the cuts in the first place?
My earlier post on Standard and Poor’s neglected to mention their comments on Anglo Irish Bank. The key passage is as follows:
Anglo has submitted a restructuring plan to the EC as a consequence of the state aid it has received from the Irish government. It has been reported that the management is proposing that Anglo is split up into a good bank and a bad bank. We anticipate that, if such a plan is approved by the EC, capital instruments such as lower Tier 2 may be left in the bad bank. Other options reportedly considered in the plan are liquidation and an orderly wind-down. Anglo’s plan is yet to be approved by the EC; we understand approval may occur in the first half of 2010.
I’d guess that these lower Tier 2 instruments (i.e. subordinated bonds) left in the Anglo “bad bank” (not to be confused with NAMA …) would end up being pretty worthless.
The S&P downgrades make for depressing reading. I really don’t want to beat the drum again about the government over-promising in relation to what the establishment of a NAMA could deliver. Still, it’s interesting to note that the basic problems afflicting the Irish banks—loan losses, weak operating income and concerns that the banks will be undercapitalised—are pretty much the same as they were this time last year.
This isn’t to say that a NAMA vehicle shouldn’t have been part of the solution: I advocated prior to Peter Bacon’s report that an asset management agency should be part of a comprehensive solution. At this point, it will be interesting to see in the end how different an outcome we get from the one I proposed last Spring and if it’s not so different, whether the government’s policy in the interim period will be seen as the dithering of officials in denial or an inspired period of delay to allow some breathing space to deal with the problem.
One shift in my thinking since last Spring is that the size of loan losses is now clearly large enough to warrant putting the banks through a resolution process and negotiating with bondholders prior to using state funds to recapitalise. In particular, it is worth noting that the covered banks have about €10 billion in outstanding subordinated bonds (€8 billion of which is accounted for by AIB and BoI).
Without doubt, our usual Bond friendly commenters will tell us that any subordinated bondholders losing money would lead to financial ruination for every Irish man, woman and child. However, given that the European Commission has been taking a hardline stance on the idea of state funds being used to compensate subordinated bondholders (see here and here) it is hard to see how this position can really be justified on practical or moral grounds.
Standard and Poor’s have again downgraded the Irish banks. The Irish Times story about this is here. The S&P Press releases are here (need to sign up but it’s free.) The reasons for the downgrade of AIB are summarised as follows:
“The negative outlook reflects our view that the quantum and timing of equity raised through recapitalization may not be sufficient to support an ‘A-‘ rating, combined with our expectation of significant losses from the remaining loan book and weak operating income as a result of the challenging economic environment,” said Ms. Curtin.
Negative rating action could occur if we consider that AIB’s recapitalization plans for 2010 are insufficient to adequately recapitalize the bank by our measures or are unlikely to be fully executed in 2010. Negative rating action could also occur if earnings pressures exceed our base-case expectations. The outlook could be revised to stable if there was reduced uncertainty regarding AIB’s ability to restore its capital position to an adequate level in the near term, and greater clarity on the strategic direction of the bank and scope of restructuring.
In relation to Bank of Ireland, the press release states:
“The rating action reflects our opinion of BOI’s prospects in light of our updated view on economic and industry risk in the bank’s core markets, together with our expectations regarding future credit losses,” said Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Giles Edwards.
It also factors in our view of the likely impact of its participation in Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) and associated restructuring and capital raising. We have lowered the ratings due to our view that the environment will remain challenging over the medium term and BOI’s financial profile will be weaker than we had previously expected, with capital expected to be only adequate by our measures and the bank continuing to make losses through 2011.
S&P’s concerns about future loan losses and capital adequacy of both the major Irish banks are likely to be shared by many potential private equity investors.