'Maple 10' queried on Anglo share accounts

MORGAN STANLEY has asked “Maple 10” investors whether they wish to close share-trading accounts through which they bought their stakes in Anglo Irish Bank in 2008 as the shares in the nationalised bank have no value and their accounts are dormant.

The US investment bank worked with Anglo in July 2008 on the purchase of a 10 per cent shareholding in the Irish bank by a group of its biggest customers.

Morgan Stanley’s brokerage business in London acted for the 10 long-standing customers of Anglo in the purchase of the stake.

They are Gerry Gannon, Joe O’Reilly, Séamus Ross, Paddy McKillen, Brian O’Farrell, Patrick Kearney, Gerry Maguire, John McCabe, Gerry Conlan and Seán Reilly.

The investment bank has written to Maple 10 group members over recent weeks to ask whether they wanted to close the share trading accounts.

Representatives of Morgan Stanley were involved in presentations to the Maple 10 investors in advance of the share transaction in the first half of July 2008.

A spokesman for Morgan Stanley said it could not comment on clients, citing confidentiality.

Under regulations, UK brokers must contact clients to keep up-to-date information where accounts have been dormant for some time or where shares in those accounts are deemed to have no value.

The value of Anglo shares was wiped out when the bank was nationalised in January 2009.

Anglo lent €451 million to 10 customers to take the 10 per cent stake of the bank that had previously been controlled by Co Fermanagh businessman Seán Quinn through his contracts for difference (CFD) investment in the bank.

The transaction was organised by Anglo to unwind the position of Mr Quinn who had built up an investment via CFDs amounting to 28.41 per cent of the bank’s shares.

The bank, now called Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, disclosed in court proceedings against a former executive last year that the loans to seven Maple 10 investors were transferred to Nama between May and November 2010.

The bank said loans to two more of the investors had not been repaid in full, while the 10th investor has repaid his share loan.

Ex-Anglo executives Seán FitzPatrick, Willie McAteer and Pat Whelan were charged last month with 16 company law offences for permitting Anglo to lend to the investors and six members of Mr Quinn’s family to buy shares.