Taxpayers will need Quinn Group to open up its books

After the protests, the legal sparring and a big dollop of public relations spin, it is now up to the Quinn Group to deliver by saving as many as possible of the 6,000 jobs the intertwined Quinn Insurance and Quinn Group employ across Ireland. The taxpayer bank, Anglo Irish, is so intimately involved in the survival of the Quinn empire that it is now only right that taxpayers should know most of what is going on behind the scenes. Just like the bankers, Sean Quinn and the Quinn Group directors will need taxpayers' cash to renegotiate the billions of euro they directly or indirectly owe the taxpayer-supported bank. It is now only right that the books of the Quinn Group companies are opened to allow taxpayers make up their own mind. At stake are many jobs stretching from Fermanagh though Armagh and Cavan into Galway and down through the midlands and into Cork. The entrepreneur Sean Quinn is widely recognised and praised as one of the few to grow indigenous jobs during the boom years. Few private business leaders have created jobs and prosperity in so many places across Ireland. Sorting out the Quinn Group finances will now be key. Nationalised lender Anglo Irish, which has gobbled billions of euro in taxpayers' cash, is owed €2.8bn by the Quinn family, owners of the Quinn Group. The Quinn family is one of the largest borrowers of the now taxpayer-supported lender. Servicing that €2.8bn debt implies the family would need pay up to €140m in interest payments each and every year. Separately, the Quinn Group owes a roster of other banks and bondholders another €1.2bn. Quinn Insurance needs, say, €250m to restore its safety reserves to meet regulatory rules. Together, the debts of the wider Quinn empire are well over €4bn. Not that the spinning has stopped altogether because Sean Quinn and his family, not unnaturally, want to hold onto to as much as they have created over the past three decades. But this does not mean that the family's immediate interests are necessarily aligned at all times with those of the taxpayer. But sustaining as many as possible of the Quinn Group jobs is in the interests of everybody. Sean Quinn and his directors saw sense and gave up a futile legal fight against Dublin's new Financial Regulator Matthew Elderfield and co-operated with Quinn Insurance to be managed by court-appointed administrators. Quinn Group, which owns the regulated insurance company, had sensibly decided that continuing the fight for much longer would have damaged business and threatened jobs. Regulator Elderfield was not going to give way as his discredited predecessor had done so often on so many occasions in the recent past with the banks and other financial firms, including Quinn Insurance. A secret deal the former regulator struck with Quinn Insurance is a case in point. Quinn Insurance had broken the rules in the autumn of 2008, and possibly on other occasions over the previous years, that even a failed regulator and a then incompetent central bank were forced to move, fining the insurance company and imposing a fine on Sean Quinn, too. Of course that deal was done in secret. It's one big lesson of the economic bust: big regulatory mistakes done in secrecy have the habit of coming back to bite taxpayers. Legal documents hint at the problems long facing Quinn Insurance. A health warning is attached to the legal documents that, by their nature, tell the story of one or other party. But legal documents have helped some Dublin journalists to checklist the claims and counter-claims made by the Quinn Group directors and the regulator. One legal document points to the intricacies of the Quinn Insurance and the Quinn Group. Sensibly, the regulator has relented and allowed Quinn insurance, now run by the administrators, to examine proposals to start re-selling some types of insurance in the North and into Britain. Quinn Insurance had made mistakes in selling some insurance lines into Britain last year and may likely exit some lines by increasing the price of its products. Quinn Group directors have also stopped a ridiculous commentary that the Quinn Insurance solvency ratios were in good shape, if only the regulator would give it more time. As the dust settles on the spat between Sean Quinn and Elderfield, the spin still goes on. On one side, readers of the some newspapers are led to believe that scores of buyers are lining up to buy Quinn Insurance. Regardless, the big debts of the Quinn empire will still need to be renegotiated. It is time for the taxpayers to be told more about the interlinked finances of Quinn Insurance and Quinn Group. The Quinn Group unwrapped The group carries about €1.2bn in debt, including approximately €600m in bond debt. But its owners, Sean Quinn and his family, are also one of the largest borrowers of Anglo Irish and separately owe the nationalised lender €2.8bn - a legacy of an extraordinary losing wager Sean Quinn bet using contracts for difference that the shares of Anglo Irish would continue to soar. The bet which exploded in early summer 2008 is the root of most of the group's problems and means that Sean Quinn's empire carries over €4bn in debt. The groups comprises: • Quinn Insurance - only set up 14 years ago, the fastest growing motor, home, commercial insurer in Ireland and Britain has offices in Enniskillen, a main office in Cavan, and others in Blanchardstown and Navan, as well as in Salford in Manchester. • The group's health unit, Quinn Healthcare, bought Bupa Irealnd in 2007 and operates in Fermoy, Co Cork, and Dublin. • Quinn Hotels includes Buswells - across the street from the Dáil on Kildare Street, Dublin - the Slieve Russell in Ballyconnell, Co Cavan; the Hilton and Ibis hotels in Prague, Czech Republic, and the Hilton in Sofia, Bulgaria; the Sheraton in Krakow, Poland; The Belfry hotel and gold resort in the English Midlands, the Crowne Plaza in Cambridge and the Holiday Inn in Nottingham. • Quinn Building Products includes blocks, insulation, cement, roof tile products and tarmac in Co Cavan, Granard in Co Longford and Williamstown in Galway. • Quinn Glass operations in Derrylin in Co Fermanagh and in Cheshire, England. • Quinn Chemicals include operations in Leipzig, Germany. • Quinn Environmental includes an over 12-acre landfill site near Tandragee, Co Armagh. • Quinn Energy recently included wind farms near Derrylin and Ballyconnell, a gas-fired power station in Co Louth and a small generator at the Tandragee landfill site. • Quinn Packaging includes facilities in Ballyconnell for Dairy Spread and yellow fat containers, milk pots for Sno and Yoplait and other yoghurts, meat and poultry trays, wrap and cling film. • Quinn Plastics operates out of Derrylin and has numerous units stretching from the English east midlands through Belgium, France and Germany and into the Czech Republic and Slovakia and down into Spain. • Quinn Property includes properties in Moscow, Kiev and in Turkey. • Quinn Radiators include operations in Ballyconnell, in Wales and Belgium.