Central Bank steps up Anglo Irish-linked bond sales

The Central Bank has stepped up the sale of bonds it received from the State in 2013 as part of a refinancing of defunct lender Anglo Irish Bank.

The Central Bank received €25 billion of Government bonds in February 2013 under a complex restructuring of so-called promissory notes which had been used by the State during the financial crisis to rescue Anglo Irish, which was subsequently renamed Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC).

IBRC had been using the promissory notes as collateral for emergency funding with the Central Bank. When the failed lender was put into liquidation in February 2013, the State replaced these notes with bonds with maturities ranging from 25 years to 40 years.

Cancelled

The Central Bank sold €500 million of the bonds on Wednesday to the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), which immediately cancelled the securities. That brings the value of bonds sold by the Central Bank to the NTMA so far this year to €3.5 billion, compared to €3 billion for the whole of 2016, €2 billion in 2015 and €500 million in 2014.