Van Eden: 'hotels suffering'

Anglo Irish Bank will go to the markets this week looking to raise funding as it begins to roll over €7bn of debt which is due to be repaid in September. The bank will use the government guarantee to help raise the money if the markets are receptive.


"We have an €80bn balance sheet to fund, and that funding need is ongoing, and we have refinancing needs this year which are very significant," chief financial officer Maarten van Eden said.


Anglo chief executive Mike Aynsley said the use of interest roll-ups was banned soon after his arrival. The roll-ups totalled more than €1.2bn last year. The only time the banks will now allow them is for "very, very specific purposes to do with asset protection" and they require his personal sign-off. The bank still has committed lending towards developers' work in progress of €1.9bn, but much of this will not be drawn down due to covenant breaches.


Van Eden said corporate and institutional deposits had "walked out of the door" of the bank "but we are hopeful that we can entice those back once we have a stabilised bank". Non-retail deposits slumped by €20bn in the last financial period. The retail deposit base has held up well, van Eden said.


Impaired assets in the company's business banking division have risen to €1.76bn and van Eden said most of this came from areas such as hotel and retail. A hotel operator that owns its own hotels would be classified as part of business banking. It is known that one of Anglo's hotel customers is struggling significantly.


Van Eden said there had been no material improvement in the number of loans that were 'past due but not impaired' since the end of last year.


Aynsley also raised fears about the impact of residential mortgages in future.


"Going forward, from an economic standpoint, Ireland is sitting on the periphery of a core that looks like it is moving into a recovery that will be crystallised over the next year," he said. "It won't affect Anglo because we don't have residential mortgage portfolios but I think that's got to be a concern – the impact of rising rates on Irish residential property as the core comes out into recovery before Ireland does. There are lots of moving parts that are going to continue to move and will take time to settle."


The bank lost €471m on securities, which van Eden said were assets "the bank never should have in the first place" because they increased its real estate exposure.


"What you would have expected to see is some sort of diversification in the assets you have bought. Asset-backed securities is a pretty toxic sector generally and what the bank is doing is trying to do is sell those assets in an orderly fashion," he said. "Why do you have assets in your treasury area? For trading, but the most important reason to have assets in treasury is for liquidity management purposes."