Former Anglo executive drops action against AIB

THE FORMER joint head of the National Asset Management Agency unit at Irish Bank Resolution Corporation who was due to join AIB after leaving the former Anglo Irish Bank has dropped his legal action against AIB over a new job that failed to materialise.

Niall Tuite had been lined up for a role at AIB on his departure from IBRC after taking redundancy from the State-owned bank. It had been signalled in March that he was due to take up a job at AIB but he issued High Court proceedings against the bank on April 5th and took up a job elsewhere the following month.

Mr Tuite’s solicitor Peter McInnes of McDowell Purcell said that online court records showing that the case was settled at a court hearing on July 24th last were incorrect. The case had been struck out but not settled, he said.

Mr McInnes declined to comment further. AIB had no comment to make on the legal action.

It is understood that Mr Tuite’s legal action has been withdrawn.

Mr Tuite was hired as banking director of Warren Private, the Dublin company that specialises in property investments led by financier Kevin Warren. Mr Tuite joined the company last May and is in charge of the firm’s banking and debt advisory division.

Prior to joining Anglo, Mr Tuite worked at Ulster Bank and AIB working with small and medium-sized businesses and large companies as well as on property finance.

At Anglo he was a director of lending before chairing the credit committee approving loans in the bank’s Irish division, the biggest part of the bank’s operations which accounted for €43 billion of the €73 billion loan book at the time of nationalisation in 2009.

He also approved loans in Anglo’s US division. He played an instrumental role in approving major property loans during the peak years of the boom.

After chairman Seán FitzPatrick and chief executive David Drumm resigned, Mr Tuite was appointed head of the bank’s Nama unit by Anglo’s new management team managing €35 billion in loans for the State agency.

He became joint head of this unit after Anglo took over Irish Nationwide, sharing the role with banker Valerie Mulhall who had managed the building society’s Nama unit.

Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty questioned Mr Tuite’s continued role in IBRC at an Oireachtas committee last year, asking why he was in charge of the bank’s Nama unit when he had been “involved directly with the ‘Maple 10’ deals and he was involved with Seán FitzPatrick and Seán Quinn’s loans.

“He has 200 staff and a salary of approximately €220,000, and he makes recommendations to Nama on loans that he approved as chairperson of the credit risk committee before 2008. How can we change the culture of the banks when this happens?” Mr Doherty asked at the Oireachtas finance committee last October.