In March, nine-year-old James Lush hosted a birthday party at JumpZone, a sprawling trampoline park to the south of Dublin city. It was the kind of boisterous occasion that invokes a "grin and...
Roughly one in five of the eurozone's top lenders failed landmark health checks at the end of last year but most have since repaired their finances.
Roughly one in five of the euro zone's top lenders failed landmark health checks at the end of last year but most have since repaired their...
The results of a wide-ranging review of Europe's banks are likely to be published later than the Oct. 17 date pencilled in with the banks but will still be released before a formal deadline of end-...
Royal Bank of Scotland is shutting its controversial turnaround division and the two most senior executives who ran it are to leave the bank, a person familiar with the situation said.
The European Central Bank laid out plans to publish an unprecedented trove of data on individual banks today.
THE Central Bank believes Irish banks when they say that they are operationally ready to handle any challenges that would come with an expected move by the European Central Bank to charge lenders who keep money on deposit.
Tens of billions of euro that banks in the eurozone have set aside for loan losses may have substantially reduced their chances of failing ECB stress tests.
Europe's largest banks cut their staff by another 3.5 percent last year and the prospect of a return to pre-crisis employment levels seems far off, despite the region's fledgling economic recovery.
WANTED: investors willing to pump €100m into a new Irish bank. Strategic partners only. Hedge funds, private equity and institutions need not apply.
AN objective stress test of the eurozone's biggest banks could reveal a capital shortfall of more than €770bn and trigger further public bailouts, a study by an adviser to the EU's financial risk watchdog and a Berlin academic has found.
CANADIAN billionaire Prem Watsa, the man currently reaping rewards from his massive 2011 investment in Bank of Ireland, says he is now considering other Irish investment opportunities.
MANY Germans feel that whoever wins Sunday's election, they should not fund any more bailouts of fellow European countries, whose errant banks are a particular bugbear for Berlin.
IT is too early to say whether this month's deal on the promissory notes will have any impact on the Budget, Finance Minister Michael Noonan said at the start of a two-day visit to London.
IRELAND’S banking recovery could yet be derailed by its international creditors.
BANKS in Ireland and several other European countries need to set aside much more money to cover potentially bad loans, credit ratings agency Moody's warned today.
BILLIONAIRE US investor Wilbur Ross is targeting more deals in Europe's financial services industry after buying into a listed company that failed to make its own inroads into the sector.
THE controversial €4,200 flight chartered by Waterford Institute of Technology for official business was not the only occasion on which the college paid for private aircraft.
HE's made his fortune by convincing the rest of us to get away from it all as often as we can, but Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary has claimed holidays are a "complete waste of time" and said he only goes on them so his wife and children won't be "traumatised".
FUGITIVE solicitor Michael Lynn has placed himself completely beyond the reach of gardai by getting residential status in Brazil.
EVERY now and again a helicopter is spotted in the skies above north-west Mayo.
EASTERN Europe was once the cornerstone of Michael Lynn's property empire.
NOBEL prize-winning economist Professor Joseph Stiglitz called for Ireland to be given a break on its crippling bank debts and said it was "very wrong" that they had been "forced" on the country in the first place.
The global backlash against an anti-Islam video spread to the streets of Dublin as hundreds of protesters marched to Google's European headquarters and demanded the offensive material be taken offline.
STUDENTS in Waterford's Pilot Training College have lost their best chance of clawing back some of the fees they lost after a sale of the company collapsed at the eleventh hour.
A CONVICTED money launderer setting up an international payment processing business in Dublin is confident he will meet Central Bank standards for the kind of person who should be running a finance firm.
ONE of the country's biggest poultry suppliers ran out of money after a director allowed his brother to build up debts of €2.6m with the company, the High Court has been told.
THE family of bankrupt businessman Sean Quinn have admitted that their father could join his son Sean Quinn Jnr in Mountjoy Prison "for years".
An extraordinary dispute between Finance Minister Michael Noonan and the administrators running Quinn Insurance was revealed in court yesterday.
A KEY lieutenant of broke businessman Bernard McNamara stands to make a fortune from a Nigerian spin-off of his ailing construction empire.
THE brother of fallen tycoon Sean Quinn has insisted that the family will get back into business -- despite the fact that his son is dodging jail in the North.
THE disgraced businessman ordered to pay €75,000 compensation to his sex assault victim in lieu of jail time shared a €1m pension top-up with his wife.
PROMINENT figures from GAA and television yesterday ducked for cover when asked to comment on their involvement in a rally supporting fallen tycoon Sean Quinn.
RTE's chief cost-cutter Conor Hayes is set to walk away from the national broadcaster with a six-figure lump sum after signing up to an early retirement scheme he helped create.
THE Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) is taking steps to avoid a repeat of the debacle over a report which claimed people were better off on the dole than working, the Irish Independent has learned.
SACKED construction workers have lost out on €25m earmarked to help them retrain because a series of delays by the Government made it "impossible" to spend the money on time.
COLLAPSED Spanish bank Bankia, dubbed the Spanish Anglo, set up a multi-billion euro Irish branch last summer.
DESCRIBED as the ultimate chip off his uncle's block, Sean Quinn's nephew Peter spent most of his career at the Quinn Group in relative obscurity before shooting to prominence when the family empire began to implode.
THEIRS was once a fiercely private family, but in the three years since the Quinn empire hit the rocks, the next generation of the Quinns has taken centre stage in a multi-billion euro showdown that's gripped the nation.
You could say I lost it a little, but only if you were being very generous. The truth is, for the last few weeks of May, while the rest of Ireland was basking in the most glorious weather we've had in forever, I was in lunatic mode. And very soon, I'm going to find out if it was all worth it.
FORMER Fianna Fail minister Dick Roche is on course to earn up to €200,000 this year in his new role as a lobbyist. This will be on top of his €50,000 public pension.
WHEN I visited the Pilot Training College's Florida outpost in 2010, I felt like I'd stumbled on the land that the recession forgot.
NAVIGATING the finances of Ireland's charities is a minefield.
FOUR charities that share millions of euro in state funding every year have refused to reveal how much their chief executives are paid.
MORE than 150 Irish charities have already vowed to sign up to a new corporate governance code launched yesterday.
An affable Kiwi, Ulster Bank chief executive Jim Brown is hard to miss in the flesh. But over the last week and a half he's become the invisible man of Ulster's IT meltdown, leaving it to divisional heads to update the media and customers.
OFFICIAL figures on the "mortgage crisis" overstate the number of households in real trouble – and lack key insights into how deep the problem really is.
IN the dying days of pre-bailout Ireland, UCD economist Morgan Kelly claimed the mortgage crisis was so severe it put Ireland "on the cusp of a social conflict on the scale of the Land War".
THE financial high point for Mick Wallace came in 2007. By that August, his steady-she-goes property development company was sitting on profits of more than €4.1m even after paying out a six-figure annual salary to its boss.
Banking sources last night confirmed that the "vast majority" of people who run into difficulty with their mortgages work out a deal with their banks -- and most of these deals involve at least some regular payments.
MORE than a third of stockbroking firms inspected by the Central Bank have failed to fully implement basic corporate governance rules recommended by their regulator.
ANGER, frustration and utter despair. Those were the feelings amongst outraged Permanent TSB (PTSB) mortgage holders who gave the bank's bosses a roasting at the annual general meeting yesterday.
PERMANENT TSB chairman Alan Cook yesterday admitted there will be job cuts coming as part of the bank's massive restructuring, but insisted it was too early to say where they would come from.
THE Central Bank shouldn't "take any credit for" notching up profits of €1.2bn last year since the massive earnings were the result of an "ill wind" that had to blow somebody some good, Governor Patrick Honohan said yesterday.
Comments come amid increasing expectations that Ireland will need a second bailout next year
TWO of the most recently-appointed senior executives at National Irish Bank (NIB) have left the soon-to-be restructured lender, including HR boss David Keenan who joined the bank less than five months ago.
BANKS must get into a "completely different mode" to deal with the escalating mortgage arrears crisis that has "really overwhelmed them", financial regulator Matthew Elderfield said yesterday.
LONG-serving AIB and Bank of Ireland staff will get pay-offs of around €81,000 -- €60,000 less than the "old" banking norm -- under the new redundancy packages that are being offered to more than 3,000 workers.
THE Government has formally asked the European Commission for permission to extend Ireland's infamous bank guarantee scheme until the end of the year.
THE spiralling mortgages crisis could trigger another multi-billion recapitalisation of our banks and force Ireland into a 'second bailout', German banking giant Deutsche claimed yesterday.
GOVERNMENT ministers made the case for more cash for Ireland in Brussels yesterday amid expectations that European leaders will agree within weeks to release funds for some sort of stimulus package.
AN economic collapse in Greece would cost €380 each for every man, woman and child in Ireland if our share of the Greek bailout is wiped out, according to Irish Independent calculations.
Just what would it actually mean for us if Greece does leave the euro? What would it mean for citizens, for taxpayers, for businesses? What would it mean for people with savings, and for those in debt?
IRELAND will pursue an "alternative" way of reducing the bank bailout costs if efforts to change Anglo Irish Bank's promissory note don't succeed, Finance Minister Michael Noonan insisted yesterday.
THE lenders set to take control of Eircom have agreed to let the telecoms giant invest €1.4bn in infrastructure over the next five years and have committed to retaining their ownership of the company for at least two years.
DANSKE'S international boss yesterday said his bank would "never" have bought National Irish Bank if they had foreseen the property crash, but insisted they would "make it work" and create shareholder value from their Irish operations.
ATHENS' stock market collapsed to its lowest level since 1992 yesterday as the country failed once more to create a stable government.
THE son of disgraced former Anglo Irish Bank boss Sean FitzPatrick has sold his plush penthouse apartment in Manhattan to pay off borrowings from the bank.
DUBLIN Airport Authority last night confirmed that it is seeking 150 voluntary redundancies.
THE Department of Finance is embarking on a significant hiring spree and is taking on more experts 'donated' by their employers so it can move from "crisis mode" and plan for the country's future.
DANSKE Bank is shifting more than half of National Irish Bank's loans into a 'bad bank', eliminating the Irish brand name within weeks and merging its Irish operations with a separate bank north of the Border.
AND so, another banking name and another banking boss exit the Irish landscape.
ALLIED Irish Banks returned to the debt markets yesterday for the first time since the crisis hit, raising €395m in bonds secured against UK mortgages.
THE ISEQ managed to defy a sea of red across European bourses yesterday, with the Dublin index closing up 0.4pc despite the increasingly perilous situation in Greece and the deepening Spanish banking crisis.
FINANCE Minister Michael Noonan has begun legal proceedings against insurance giant Allianz to settle a claim against an Allianz-issued bond.
AVIVA last night insisted the departure of its group chief executive Andrew Moss after shareholders voted against his £2.69m pay package would have no impact on the insurer's overhaul of its Irish business.
EUROPE should take responsibility for regulating Ireland's banks and repaying bondholders of collapsed financial institutions, Central Bank Governor Patrick Honohan said last night.
DUBLIN's ISEQ followed global markets into negative territory yesterday as bleak US jobs figures and weaker-than-expected European economic data combined to spook investors.
THE Labour Relations Commission (LRC) has signalled that it could need another fortnight to make a recommendation on AIB's massive redundancy scheme.
ROYAL Bank of Scotland chief Stephen Hester yesterday claimed he'd received "strong assurances" from the Irish Government that the new personal insolvency regime won't be "unduly anti-business".
INSURANCE group Axa is to shut its investment arm Axa Financial in a move brokers say will lessen competition in the market.
HARD-pressed homeowners face having to wait until next year for another mortgage cut after the European Central Bank yesterday hinted that it's likely to keep rates unchanged until 2013.
Investing in infrastructure could create jobs but governments need to rein in day-to-day spending instead of hiking taxes
THE average house is undervalued by up to €50,000, according to a new report on the state of the property market.
AIB is set to use its massively-overvalued shares to pay a €280m dividend to the State instead of using hard cash -- but the Department of Finance last night insisted the move would have no impact on the national accounts or finances.
The State has earned more than €3.1bn in fees from the bank guarantee scheme that was infamously introduced after a late night cabinet session in September 2008.
HUNDREDS of staff at Ulster Bank will get a better redundancy package than they previously thought -- but workers at rival AIB have been told there is another delay to their pay-offs being finalised.
THE Central Bank has commissioned consultants BlackRock to carry out a review into the bailed-out banks' strategies for dealing with troubled mortgages and SME loans.
FIRST-quarter profits at FBD's core insurance business topped both management expectations and 2011's results -- despite a further contraction in the insurance industry and a "very competitive" market.
THE deposits crisis in Ireland's banks eased markedly in March but lending woes continued as banks suffered another monthly contraction in their loan books.
TRADING in the Irish equities market rose 26pc to break through the €10bn mark in the first quarter of the year as investors' confidence increased dramatically from their gloomy outlook at the end of last year.
The International Monetary Fund last night moved to dismiss claims that it would provide a bailout for Ireland if voters rejected the fiscal treaty.
AIB, Bank of Ireland and Permanent TSB will submit new plans to the Central Bank this week showing how they will channel more resources into dealing with those who cannot keep up mortgage repayments.
CENTRAL Bank deputy governor Matthew Elderfield yesterday insisted it was "vital" that the authorities do "whatever is necessary" to protect Ireland's reputation as a financial hub.
THE National Lottery is hoping to arrest four years of declining sales by launching a 'worldwide' version of the Euromillions and boosting online sales with a new mobile-friendly website.
Despite poorer outlook, Government expects to get deficit down to 8.3pc of GDP this year without further budgetary measures
THE 'new' Permanent TSB is set to cut more than 100 jobs and close up to 15 branches as it fights its way back to profitability, the Irish Independent has learned.
SALES of life and pensions products plummeted by 17pc in the first three months of the year, continuing a trend of rapid falls that began in the second half of 2011.
PERMANENT TSB's future as a stand-alone institution has been secured after officials from the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund threw their weight behind a plan to preserve the bank's independence.
IRISH Bank Resolution Corporation's chief risk officer Peter Rossiter has become the latest former Anglo staffer to defect to almost-nationalised AIB.
THEY came in smaller numbers, but for many Bank of Ireland shareholders the need to lash out was every bit as pressing yesterday as it was when they gathered for their first post-crisis meeting more than three years ago.
BANK of Ireland is appointing rent receivers in a bid to clamp down on buy-to-let investors who "divert" their property income away from the bank, chief executive Richie Boucher said yesterday.
THE National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) postponed doling out billions in cash to the banks in March so the money could be used for an obtuse scheme to avoid making a €3.1bn payment to the former Anglo Irish Bank, it emerged last night.
THE 'new' Permanent TSB could become the 'master servicer' for more than €20bn of tracker mortgages set to be taken off the balance sheets of PTSB and AIB, the Irish Independent has learned.
PERMANENT TSB chiefs will today tell troika officials that they want to keep billions of tracker mortgages on the bank's books so the newly-independent lender will have a balance sheet of as much as €14bn.
THE collapse of Quinn Insurance could leave Irish policyholders footing a bill for close to €1bn -- well above the €600m initially expected -- the insurer's administrators have warned the Department of Finance.
NATIONAL Irish Bank owner Danske has decided to "sell or liquidate" its fledgling Irish life insurance business -- but NIB last night insisted the move did not signal any change in its parent's commitment to the Irish market.
AIB yesterday began legal manoeuvres that could clear the way for the bailed-out bank to pay a €280m dividend to the National Pensions Reserve Fund (NPRF) in mid-May.
OFFICIALS from the bailout teams at the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund may never again face the full glare of Ireland's media.
IRISH banks are making long-term loans to businesses and homeowners at some of the lowest interest rates in the eurozone -- while paying out some of the highest rates for deposits.
THE volume of debt finance supporting Irish banks plummeted by €11.6bn in February as bond redemptions greatly outstripped the value of bonds issued by both domestic and IFSC banks.
Average rate paid by homeowners here down 12.6pc, compared with 1pc in eurozone countries
IRISH Bank Resolution Corporation has abandoned a multi-million euro deal to outsource parts of its former wealth management business and will now "wind down" the unit over five years instead.
