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The Fitzpatrick Tapes: The Rise and Fall of One Man, One Bank, and One Country
One day in May 2009, Sean FitzPatrick - the disgraced former chief executive and chairman of Anglo Irish Bank - sat down to lunch in a Holiday Inn in Dublin. This is the story of FitzPatrick: the man who built that bank that has been at the centre of Ireland's economic meltdown.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
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April 29, 202421/4/24
Alternative title: Sean Fitzpatrick: Unreliable Witness.
Fitzpatrick comes across as ignorant, unrepentant, disingenuous, and callous, despite some words of contrition. The title is a misnomer in that the actual tapes do not contain revelations, the authors have to dig them up elsewhere because Fitzpatrick consistently claims he didn't know or didn't understand. The authors have to say over and over "it doesn't seem credible that Fitzpatrick didn't know or discuss" a range of key issues, presumably because he doesn't want to damn himself.
It's a good overview, though assumes some knowledge of the issues.
"The regulator and Anglo had gone to great lengths to help Quinn paper the cracks in his empire"
Both BoI and AIB are asked to buy Irish Nationwide ("a hedge fund masquerading as a building society"), and both decline. Anglo, and Fitzpatrick, are interested, but it doesn't materialize.
PwC advised the government, before the bank guarantee, that Anglo's bad debts could be €5 billion, at the time, they were €40 billion. p.181
Anglo gave Irish Life & Permanent €3.2 billion, and IL&P give it back, but through Irish Life, it's insurance arm, so Anglo could make it look like customer deposits. p194
Alternative title: Sean Fitzpatrick: Unreliable Witness.
Fitzpatrick comes across as ignorant, unrepentant, disingenuous, and callous, despite some words of contrition. The title is a misnomer in that the actual tapes do not contain revelations, the authors have to dig them up elsewhere because Fitzpatrick consistently claims he didn't know or didn't understand. The authors have to say over and over "it doesn't seem credible that Fitzpatrick didn't know or discuss" a range of key issues, presumably because he doesn't want to damn himself.
It's a good overview, though assumes some knowledge of the issues.
"The regulator and Anglo had gone to great lengths to help Quinn paper the cracks in his empire"
Both BoI and AIB are asked to buy Irish Nationwide ("a hedge fund masquerading as a building society"), and both decline. Anglo, and Fitzpatrick, are interested, but it doesn't materialize.
PwC advised the government, before the bank guarantee, that Anglo's bad debts could be €5 billion, at the time, they were €40 billion. p.181
Anglo gave Irish Life & Permanent €3.2 billion, and IL&P give it back, but through Irish Life, it's insurance arm, so Anglo could make it look like customer deposits. p194
October 26, 2017
Could be better written but very interesting (and scary) nonetheless
March 3, 2021
Well put together, coherent, pacily written. Hard to read at times, for those of us who lived through the boom and bust in ireland
February 3, 2012
Fantastic book. Difficult to believe how these men gambled with their money and the money of the bank. And how well they hid it.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews