Our new Dutch overlords

The Irish Times and RTE say that a team from KPMG Netherlands office is doing an assessment of Anglo Irish Bank’s options, with one option apparently being a wind down.  At some point we’ll have to do a complete list of Brian Lenihan’s statements about Anglo Irish over the last 14 months, but it has gone from being solvent and of systemic importance in the Irish economy to a bank that may not have a future.  But upon which a lot of money has been spent and a lot of water has gone under the bridge from the original decisions made in reaction to its travails.

One underlying issue is that the most powerful person in the European Union apparatus now is not within the new Lisbon positions but the competition commissioner Neelie Kroes, who has been extracting a steep price under state aid rules for any bank feeding at the public trough.  And she won’t be impressed if Anglo shows up with a fairy tale plan for how it can find new things to do in the post-bubble Irish economy.   Incidentally, I suspect that as much as the salary cap, Mrs Kroes was an issue in why AIB couldn’t find an outside CEO.  That person would be coming in to head up a bank that has its own set of Commission conditions coming next year.  The job of the CEO might be to break it up.