DEVELOPER RAY GREHAN AGREES TO UK BANKRUPTCY RESTRICTION ORDER UNTIL 2021 - Ray Grehan, one of the highest-profile developers in the boom, has agreed to a bankruptcy restriction order in the UK for seven years after failing to fully disclose his assets.
The order means that Mr Grehan faces the same restrictions as in bankruptcy until October 9th, 2021, writes the Irish Times. During that time he must disclose his status as a person subject to bankruptcy restrictions when borrowing more than £500 in the UK and must not act as a director of a company in Britain without having court permission among other matters. Mr Grehan, who gives his address as Abuja, Nigeria, went bankrupt in the UK on December 30th, 2011, with a total deficiency of £417 million (€523 million). He is understood to have considered challenging his restriction order but decided against doing because of the legal cost of taking such an action. Instead, Mr Grehan, in a filing in the High Court of Justice in London on October 9th, stated: “I failed to disclose all assets and transfers of assets to connected parties in a statement of affairs filed in the High Court on 30 December 2011. “The trustee has, as a result of his own investigations, identified assets and disposals not disclosed in the statement of affairs. My failure to disclose these assets and disposals has significantly reduced the assets in my bankruptcy and resulted in a substantial increase in the cost of the bankruptcy.” Mr Grehan said he had failed to disclose four bank accounts he had held in the two years prior to his bankruptcy and the transfer of an apartment in Co Leitrim to his daughter on October 18th, 2011.
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MARIO DRAGHI WON'T ANSWER QUESTIONS AT BANK INQUIRY - The European Central Bank (ECB) will not participate directly in the upcoming Banking Inquiry, its president Mario Draghi confirmed yesterday. At a meeting in Brussels the ECB chief also insisted that the so-called Trichet letter did not force Ireland into the 2010 EU/IMF bailout, says the Irish Independent. The letter, sent by Mr Draghi's predecessor Jean-Claude Trichet to the late Brian Lenihan in November 2010, was finally published this month. It controversially includes a strongly worded insistence that Ireland seek a bailout, and stand behind loans owed by banks here to the ECB at the risk of seeing liquidity to Irish lenders being cut off. In his reply the then Finance Minister Brian Lenihan agreed to accept the terms of the EU/IMF bailout. But Mr Draghi said the letter was not the cause of the 2010 bailout. Several factors, not the Trichet letter, triggered what Mr Draghi called the request for assistance by Ireland in 2010. By November 2010 the situation in Ireland had deteriorated rapidly and the ECB's Governing Council had a duty to address that issue, he said. A quarter of all liquidity provided by the ECB to Euro area banks at that stage was to lenders in Ireland, he said. He was speaking in Brussels at the European Parliament's Economic and Finance Committee, where the ECB president regularly appears to answer questions from MEPs.
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TYCO TO MOVE ITS GLOBAL HEADQUARTERS TO CORK - Fire prevention and security specialist Tyco has moved its global headquarters from its native Switzerland to Cork just years after dramatically reducing its presence in the city, reports the Irish Examiner. Its global headquarters will be based at the same location as its current global business services centre in City Gate, Mahon, although a number of employees could also be housed in One Albert Quay in the city centre. As revealed by the Examiner in January, the company is to add hundreds of additional employees to its Cork operations with Tyco yesterday putting the number as high as 600; bringing its total Irish workforce to about 700. The move to transfer its international headquarters in the city comes just years after it made 320 people redundant following its decision to close its manufacturing plant in Cork in 2008.
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INVESTORS CHALLENGE MURDOCH VOTING RIGHTS - Independent shareholders in News Corp have staged their largest protest to date against the voting structure that has given Rupert Murdoch’s family control of the media company for decades, writes the Financial Times. The scale of the opposition at News Corp’s annual meeting last week revealed that Southeastern Asset Management, which became the company’s largest outside shareholder last year, is at odds with the family over the issue. The publicity-shy Memphis fund manager now controls 12.7% of News Corp’s voting stock. Smaller dissident investors on Monday promised to step up their campaign against the dual-class share structure that gives the Murdochs 39.4% of the voting power, even though they own only 14% of the company. Institutional investors and governance campaigners have become increasingly critical of dual-class share structures, which have been historically common in the media industry and have enjoyed a resurgence in recently-listed technology companies where entrepreneurial founders want to keep control. News Corp argued in favour of the status quo, saying the structure allowed Mr Murdoch and other executives to focus on the long term and that many shareholders were attracted to the company’s stock because of it. But 47.4% of votes cast supported the proposal to introduce one-share, one-vote. Proxy voting advisory services ISS and Glass Lewis both argued in favour of cutting the Murdochs’ voting power.
