Shareholders round on Cook over losses

OUTSIDE THE RDS, Portuguese football fans chanted ahead of a European cup final down the road at the Aviva Stadium. Inside shareholders made as much of a racket.

Chairman Alan Cook, Irish Life and Permanent’s replacement for Gillian Bowler, got it in the neck from shareholders at what is likely to be the last annual meeting of the company in its present form.

The Central Bank’s stress tests in March set ILP’s capital requirement at €4 billion, leaving Government control a racing certainty. Furious shareholders, who may see all of their investment wiped out, rounded on Cook, noting that the company said last September that it required just €243 million.

Choosing an analogy suitable to the footballing occasion, he said: “The goalposts have been moved.”

He admitted that the finances of the company were “not materially different from last September”, but that the Central Bank applied a far tougher set of conditions. “They have applied a killer punch,” the Englishman later said, mixing his sporting metaphors.

One shareholder said ILP’s capital bill had increased 16-fold in just six months, describing either last September’s stress tests or the March tests as “an utter joke”.

Cook said he was not a fan of the tests but “this is what we are saddled with”, leaving the company with an “astonishing” €4 billion target.

He was accused of not defending the 100,000 shareholders.

“Running away from the problem is not my style,” he said.

“You should be running to challenge this,” shouted one investor.

He had argued for shareholder losses to be minimised, he said.

Piotr Skoczylas, head of Malta investment fund Scotchstone Capital, argued throughout the stormy three-hour meeting, saying shareholders should not be wiped out when ILP was not insolvent.

The Polish-born investor, who handed out leaflets to rally investors to his cause, said shareholders were being asked to pay for “an artificial state of bankruptcy”.

Cook said the tests benefited the State by restoring confidence in the banks but this was little consolation for ILP shareholders.

“It seems profoundly unfair but it is a reality,” he said.

One shareholder, John O’Riordan, said Cook’s arrival was “a bit like being appointed captain of the Titanic as it hit the iceberg”.

“It certainly has been a baptism of fire,” responded Cook.