Interesting times for former IBRC chiefs

Among the various gripes the Department of Finance had with the top management of the nationalised Anglo Irish Bank/Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, was the level of remuneration at what became a wind-down operation.

However, former chief executive Mike Aynsley and the former head of asset management at the bank, Richard Woodhouse, may be thinking now that the money they were given was the least they were entitled to given that the job was going to pursue them despite the bank's sudden liquidation in February 2013.

This week came the news that the Government is establishing a special commission to examine certain aspects of the bank’s affairs, while yesterday it was decided that the Siteserv sale would be the subject of a two-day Dáil debate.

Meanwhile Aynsley and Woodhouse are in the UK, getting on with their lives. In early 2014 Aynsley joined the board of, and became an interim managing director in the UK of, money service business Dahabshiil Transfer Services, the biggest UK player in the emigrant remittance market to Somalia, estimated at $500 million a year. He and Woodhouse also set up a number of companies in which they are directors and shareholders, being Prospera Ltd, Prospera Capital and Prospera Associates.

The companies have yet to file any financial statements so the extent to which they are active is not clear.

Woodhouse is a director and shareholder of an Irish company, the Working Capital Company, set up in 2013. He became a director in 2014. The other director/shareholders include Robert Dix, the former KPMG partner who is a non-executive director of Siteserv as well as being on the board of the former Quinn group company that is trying to retrieve the international property portfolio the Quinn family tried to put beyond the reach of Anglo/IBRC.

It is understood Working Capital was to be an online invoice financing venture but didn’t really take off. It has yet to file accounts. Aynsley and Woodhouse certainly had an interesting few years of it when they answered the call and came to Anglo after its nationalisation. Their Irish adventures may not be over yet.