More gloom emerging from Anglo Irish Bank

Recent  media reports suggest that Anglo Irish Bank is set to announce the highest losses in Irish corporate history a whopping €14 billion as the former financial director of the Bank, William McAteer, FCA is detained at 6.30 AM at his home this morning, March 24th,  for Garda interrogation under S4 of the Criminal Justice Act. 

Today’s papers advise that 70 of the Bank’s employees are to receive pay increases because they took on extra responsibilities. 

The 2009 Interim Report for the six months to 31 March 2009 reported a loss of €4.1 billion arising from specific lending impairment charges of €3.7 billion and collective lending impairment charges of €400 million.  The Government provided Anglo with €4 billion as a consequence.

The Bank retained the services of Drury Communications to explain the 2009 Interim Report which were announced by former chairman, Donal O’Connor.

Was it really necessary to retain external high cost publicists to announce these results to the sole shareholder, The Minister for Finance? 

Will external publicists be employed to explain the pending results, or will some of the 1,800 employees have the necessary fluency to deal with this?  Anglo Irish Bank employed an average of 1,864 persons on 30 September 2008 at a total cost of €206 million.  That is an average cost of over €110,000 per person.