QUINN INSURANCE, part of Sean Quinn’s group, has said that the impact of his family’s failed investment on Anglo Irish Bank on the business has been fully disclosed.
Colin Morgan, chief executive of Quinn Insurance, said the group “clearly defined” the impact of the losses from the investment and the anticipated impact for 2008 in the group’s 2007 results.
Mr Morgan was responding to comments by Jimmy Tolan, the chief executive of rival insurer the VHI, the State's health insurer, in an interview with The Irish Times.
Mr Tolan called for the full extent of Mr Quinn’s losses on Anglo to be disclosed, saying that they “should be in the public domain” as they were “relevant for people who buy their products”.
Quinn Group wrote off €888 million over two years on loans to the family to cover the investment, which climbed to an indirect interest of 28 per cent in the bank at its peak. The family later took a direct 15 per cent shareholding.
The investment became virtually worthless when the bank was nationalised in January 2009. Mr Quinn has only publicly stated that his family lost “more than a billion” in the bank.
The Sunday Timesreported last weekend that Mr Quinn had lost €2.5 billion in Anglo, citing an internal report by the bank shortly before it was nationalised. A Quinn spokesman has dismissed this figure as "speculative".
Mr Morgan said the impact on customers of Quinn Group and its subsidiary, Quinn Insurance, had been disclosed “for a long time and there is no further exposure”.
The family’s losses on the investment were “separate”, he said.
“There is obviously a close relationship between the family and the company, but the company can stand on its own two feet,” he said.
Mr Morgan claimed that Mr Tolan was “trying to be a little bit scaremongering” with his comments about the Quinn Group. Mr Morgan said the group returned to profitability in 2008. It had incurred losses of €425 million for 2007 after write-offs from the Anglo investment.
Responding to Mr Tolan’s comments that it was “very hard” and “very limited” for Irish conglomerates such as Quinn Group to last longer periods, Mr Morgan said it was “difficult to see how Mr Tolan feels qualified to comment in this regard particularly in the context of the haemorrhage of customers from his own organisation”.
Mr Morgan said that the Quinn family intended to convert the group into two publicly quoted companies by the end of 2015.
“This has always been the long-term strategy and will ensure the continued long-term success of the manufacturing and financial services businesses,” he said.
