FORMER ANGLO ADMITS IT CAN NOT FIND 135 QUINN PAPERS - Family members of businessman Seán Quinn have been told that the former Anglo Irish Bank has been unable to locate 135 original documents, including facility letters for loans of over €1 billion.
In a letter on October 30th to the Quinns, who are suing the bank which is now in liquidation over alleged illegal lending of over €2 billion, lawyers for the former bank McCann FitzGerald say they have "not yet located" 135 documents and that "efforts to locate the documents continue". Missing documents and copies of original documents are key to the family's proceedings, as they claim that key documents were falsely described, backdated or were not shown to them in full before they borrowed vast sums from Anglo in order to illegally support the bank's own share price, says the Irish Times. Among the missing documents identified by McCann FitzGerald are facility letters and share pledges relating to the Holiday Inn Hotel in Nottingham, which was formerly owned by Aoife Quinn. The Quinns contend that the bank should not have been able to seize control of this hotel in 2011 if they did not have the original loan documents. Original documents relating to dozens of loans to various members of the Quinn family have also not been found.
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SMEs AT RISK FROM VULTURE FUNDS, WARNS MUSGRAVE'S - One of the country's biggest wholesale and retail groups has warned that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) must be protected when banks sell on loans to international funds. Changes are "urgently needed", according to Musgrave Group, which operates the SuperValu and Centra chains, often in partnership with independent franchise owners. Those independent retailers are being encouraged to refinance away from banks, leaving them vulnerable to price hikes or enforcement when US funds take over their debt, the company said. It felt that lenders are pushing customers away because they are focused on debt recovery, or leaving the country, writes the Irish Independent. The Musgrave Group's 900 retail partners employ over 30,000 people. It wants funds that buy SME loans to be regulated, and for ownership of such debt to require Central Bank authorisation, "to protect consumers, including SMEs". It set out the case for regulation in a submission to the Department of Finance, which launched a public consultation process on the issue of loan portfolio sales in August.
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OSBORNE FACES DOUBLING AUSTERITY CUTS TO £48 BILLION A YEAR TO HIT TARGETS - UK Chancellor George Osborne must cut deeper into the budgets of the army, police and courts as the annual savings needed to meet his austerity targets are set almost to double to £48 billion, Financial Times analysis shows. As Britain hits the midway mark of its decade of planned austerity, the findings suggest that far from the cuts becoming lighter after 2015 - as the chancellor and prime minister David Cameron have suggested - they are poised to become much harsher for departments outside the protected areas of health, schools and overseas aid. The findings will come as a blow to the Conservative party which, only six months away from a general election, is seeking to attract voters with talk of more tax cuts. Many experts, including the International Monetary Fund, say taxes will have to rise in the next parliament or more money will have to be borrowed to prevent a serious hit on many public services. Mr Cameron wrote last month that most of the cuts in the austerity programme had been achieved, with only £25 billion a year still to be removed from budgets. But the FT’s analysis has found that less than half the reductions have been made. The analysis is based on the Office for Budget Responsibility’s Budget figures from March, which outline the government’s spending plans until 2018-19.
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SANDWICH COMPANY SEEKS EMPLOYEES FROM HUNGARY - A sandwich-making company is to search for new employees in Hungary after being unable to find enough applicants from Britain. Greencore Group's new £35m factory in Moulton Park, Northampton, is due to open in the spring of 2016. Human resources director Allyson Russell said most of its 300 new staff members would be recruited from Hungary, writes The Guardian. She said "very low unemployment" in Northampton meant few people had applied for the positions locally. The demolition of a former shoe factory has started, ahead of the construction of the new building. Greencore, which employs 1,200 staff in the US and Britain, is currently advertising for machine setters, cleaners, porters and quality monitors. Mrs Russell told the BBC recruiters would be heading to Hungary to find new employees. "In Northampton, we do have a problem in that there is very low unemployment. "There aren't enough people around and it is not always the kind of work people have wanted to do." She said Greencore had run a scheme with job centres in Northampton, but had not attracted many applicants from the town.
