THE and QS are now divorced, so more rankings for all.
The Times Higher Education ranking is out too (the number in brackets is QS):
TCD: 72 (52)
UCD: 94 (114)
Cork: >199 (184)
Numbers 200-399 can only be had with an iPhone.
The THE ranking is of course far superior than the QS ranking because the Vrije U Amsterdam does much better according to THE (139 v 171) and ranks higher than U Amsterdam.
The Irish state paid Price Waterhouse Coopers €4.95 million for advice and professional services in relation to the banking crisis.
PWC were commissioned after the state guarantee was put in place to assess the balance sheets of the covered banks. As I have noted here before, PWC finished their fieldwork in December 2008 and concluded in relation to Anglo:
Under the PwC highest stress scenario, Anglo’s core equity and tier 1 ratios are projected to exceed regulatory minima (Tier 1 – 4%) at 30 September 2010 after taking account of operating profits and stressed impairments … We used an independent firm of property valuers (Jones Lang LaSalle) to value a sample of 160 properties held as security in relation to the top 20 land & development exposures on Anglo’s books as identified in our Phase II review and report. The results of this work indicated that impairment charges over the period FY09 to FY11 would fall in a range between the two PwC impairment scenarios but closer PwC’s lower impairment scenario.
Can we ask for our €5 million back?
I know this website attracts a lot of readers who are interested in banking and in monetary policy. Often, these people are regular members of the public trying to understand what’s going on in the world but starting out from a somewhat hazy understanding of the various technicalities. So (hopefully without being too patronising) I thought I’d point people towards the course webpage for my UCD module “International Monetary Economics.”
This is a final year undergraduate module that covers banking, financial stability, monetary policy and some issues in international finance. Probably most readers will find the material pretty basic but for those of you who would like to have some material to study, it’s intended to help those with a limited background get up to speed with current events in banking and monetary policy. The focus is largely international but Irish banks get the odd shout out. This is the first week of classes (out of a total of twelve), so I’ll be adding lecture notes and other material as I go along.
Constructive criticism of the notes is welcome. (Long deranged rants about fractional reserve banking are not.)
Next May 20th, the Financial Mathematics and Computation Cluster (FMCC) will again hold a conference on financial risk modeling of European investable assets (see below). Once again the conference will be held in Dublin, Ireland, poster child for the flaws in Eurozone financial risk architecture. As was the case last year, we hope to attract papers covering the full span of Eurozone risk modeling and analysis. In addition to the Call for Papers, the FMCC is actively seeking industry partners for this conference and our other research-practitioner outreach programmes. For more details contact gregory.connor@nuim.ie or irene.moore@ucd.ie.
The Basle Committe has announced an agreement for higher capital proposals. The agreement is, unsurpringly, somewhat watered down relative to earlier proposals and components such as a countercyclical capital buffer don’t seem to have much substance. Implications for the Irish banks seem minimal, as the total common equity requirements announced are the same as those set down by the Central Bank in its PCAR exercise.