ACC executives in crunch talks over new 'bad bank'
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FOUR senior executives from Dutch-owned ACC Bank, which is cracking down on troubled developer customers, held crunch talks on Thursday with top officials from the Department of Finance and the new 'bad bank'.
The delegation, led by Frank Steenhuisen, a risk director from ACC's owner, Rabobank, indicated that they would seek to work with the NAMA in order to achieve the best possible outcome for both sides from the collapsed property market.
Most other foreign-owned banks had already told the department and NAMA officials that they would co-operate with the 'bad bank'.
There has been general agreement that there is a need for foreign banks operating in Ireland to work closely with NAMA as both sides seek to recover the maximum value on tens of billions of euro of troubled property loans.
A large proportion of development loans in the country are bankrolled by a number of lenders, based both in Ireland and abroad.
Thursday's talks took place in the department at exactly the same time as financial journalists were looking over the NAMA draft legislation in another room across the corridor.
One source said ACC "agreed to go away and try and find common ground" with NAMA.
Government and banking sources believe that ACC's ultimate strategy in aggressively pursuing developers such as Liam Carroll, John Fleming and Paddy Kelly was to get other creditors to take over the Dutch lenders' exposure.
In the Commercial Court Mr Justice Peter Kelly also told Liam Carroll's other bankers that they should cover ACC's €136m debt to the beleaguered developer, if they were intent on stopping his companies going into receivership or liquidation.
However, sources said that there have not been any talks between the banks to take ACC out of the picture.
It is also understood that there are no plans between other lenders to hold negotiations to take over the Dutch-owned bank's exposure.
"If they do that, it sets an unhelpful precedent for other foreign banks who want out of Ireland," said a senior banking figure. "Effectively, you'd have a situation where the domestic banks are bailing them out."
- Joe Brennan
