Former banker Michael Fingleton, who ran Irish Nationwide, one of the biggest casualties of the 2008 financial crash, died at the weekend aged 88, closing the door on fallout from the financial crisis that crippled Ireland’s banks and led directly to the Troika bailout of the State.
His death comes just days after the National Asset Management Agency (Nama), the bad bank established to deal with the fallout from the collapse of lenders, including Fingleton’s Irish Nationwide, was wound down. And it likely brings to an end 17 years of litigation arising from that crisis.
Fingleton died on Sunday, according to a spokesman, seven years after a severe stroke that left him incapacitated.
Through a near 40-year career with lender Irish Nationwide, Fingleton was a well-known and sometimes controversial figure in business.
Originally, from Tubbercurry, Co Sligo, he joined the old Irish Industrial Building Society in 1971 when it employed just five people and had assets of £2.3 million (€2.9 million). He grew it to a business with assets of some €16 billion at its height in 2007.
At that time, Fingleton was reported to have been worth €75 million.
However, the lender was one of the worst casualties when a property investment bubble burst in 2008, sparking a financial crisis that threatened to leave the State insolvent after the then government guaranteed Irish banks’ liabilities.
Of the six banks guaranteed by the State in September 2008, Irish Nationwide had the most toxic loan book, to which Nama applied the biggest discount – as much as 72 per cent – when it took its commercial property loans over.
Irish Nationwide’s losses on were estimated at €6 billion. Its bailout cost taxpayers €5.4 billion.
Fingleton left the lender in 2009, with his son later telling a court that the former banker had just €25,000 in two personal bank accounts and outstanding judgment debts of more than €10.7 million as of late 2022.
Fingleton and other executives subsequently faced questions about their management of Irish Nationwide, particularly into whether the company followed proper procedures, or applied prudent safeguards, when approving some commercial property loans.
Financial regulator the Central Bank began a long inquiry into the running of Irish Nationwide in 2015. But it dropped proceedings against Fingleton in 2019 on the grounds of his ill health after the stroke.
However, the liquidators of Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) – which housed the remnants of Irish Nationwide and Anglo Irish Bank – pursued him through the courts for allegedly negligently mismanaging the lender before it imploded. The claim was originally for €6 billion, but was subsequently pared back to €290 million.
Attempts through his wife Eileen Fingleton and son Michael Fingleton jnr, under their powers of attorney, to halt these proceedings, which went as high as the Supreme Court, failed.
The case was heard before Judge Michael Quinn last year. He reserved judgment when it concluded in October. Its outcome is now in doubt.