Quinn was our champion when the State did nothing

10 March/April 2022

his is a tale of greed, destruction, violence,

corruption and betrayal.

The Quinn Group business employing 7000

with proﬁts of €500m/year has turned into a

husk of itself with only 800 employees and

meagre proﬁts with its construction division scandal-

ously losing money. Conventional wisdom blames the

recklessness of Sean Quinn but there was a further

betrayal of the community that, reﬂecting national indif-

ference to the border counties, has gone untold.

Keep your eye on who was in charge as the Quinn

Group has disintegrated! The name of the Quinn Group

was changed to Aventas in 2013 to Quinn Industrial

Holdings in 2015 and to Mannok in 2020. Along the way

it sold o Quinn Glass, Quinn Plastics and Quinn Radia-

tors abroad. The sale of Quinn Packaging did not

complete.

However, the ﬁrst big event that should detain us is

that on 30 March 2010, following an application by the

Central Bank of Ireland, the High Court appointed joint

provisional administrators to Quinn Insurance Limited,

“Quinn was our

champion when

the State

did nothing”

By Michael Smith

A Crossborder Community feels so betrayed that it’s issued legal

proceedings against the part successors to the Quinn Group - QBRC

The nme of he Quinn Group ws chnged o Avens

in 2013 o Quinn Indusril Holdings in 2015 nd o

Mnnok in 2020. Along he wy i sold off Quinn Glss,

Quinn Plsics nd Quinn Rdiors brod. The sle

of Quinn Pckging did no complee

the ﬁrst manifestation of regulatory stringency that has

now been playing out for 12 years.

Then, in April 2011, a share receiver was appointed

over the whole Quinn Group, by Anglo Irish Bank Group

(then owned by the State), to which the Quinn Group

owed over €2.8 billion. A receiver took control of the

Quinn family’s equity interest in the Quinn Group (Quinn

had divested himself some years earlier), replacing

them with a board of outside professionals. This served

the interests of bondholders who now owned 25% but

had 75% voting right, with the balance held by the State.

Formerly the bondholders interest had been contingent

not a shareholding and they technically had no voting

rights.

That is the principal grievance of Sean Quinn – he

accepts that he had scandalously over-invested in con-

tracts for dierence (CFDs – suspended payments, i.e.

agreements to exchange the dierence in value of a

ﬁnancial instrument between the time at which a con-

tract is opened and it is closed) but feels the situation

could have been salvaged if nerves in government had

been held and the bondholders not indulged.

The Quinn Group and its advisors considered it could

repay the €2.8 billion it owed including the €2.34 billion

it owed Anglo for share support. Others say that would

have depended on retaining institutional conﬁdence

that he had done a great deal to lose.

Anglo and Quinn had been in discussions to avoid a

legal dispute over the way Quinn had supported Anglo’s

shares, with awareness from State regulators that the

State has disingenuously always tried to deny. But the

plug was pulled.

NEWS

March/April 2022 11

Quinn was declared bankrupt in the Republic on 16 January 2012.

The State’s motivation may or may not have been primarily the welfare of

the local community and its jobs. But it compromised on legality.

A notable delinquency was ignoring the outrageous actions of Anglo Irish

Bank. Ann Nolan, the Second Secretary General at the Department of

Finance with responsibility for ﬁnancial stability/risk management gave evi-

dence in 2015 to a case taken by the Quinn family against IBRC, and Sean

Quinn and former Quinn Group directors. The family had had a 25 per cent

stake in Anglo, held through the CFDs. It later converted this into a 15 per

cent stake in the bank, using bank ﬁnance, partly channelled through Quinn

Direct Insurance, while other long-term customers, of the bank (the Maple

10) used further loans from the bank to buy the other 10 per cent. This con

version had the eect of preventing a ﬂood of shares coming onto the

market. But it was ultimately illegal and improper to facilitate the wind-down

of Anglo and the Quinn Group without resolving this extraordinary illegality

for it was predictable that the Quinns would get some very substantial ben

eﬁt if it could be shown that their own delinquencies were known to the

regulatory section of the Department of Finance, the State.

Nolan stated [above] that a draft letter dated 3 February 2009 from the

then chairman of Anglo, Donal O’Connor, to Minister for Finance Brian Leni

han stated: “As requested, I enclose a report on the extent of lending for the

purposes of share acquisitions and contracts for dierences generally and

Anglo shares in particular”. However, she also drew attention to an alterna

tive version of the same letter, dated the next day which was amended to

read: “The total extent of lending by the Bank for the purposes of acquiring

publicly quoted shares is €1.767bn (See Annex 1). We do not lend for the

purpose of taking positions in contracts for dierences. Of this total,

€918.6m relates to lending for the purpose of acquiring shares in Anglo Irish

Bank”.

The letter was changed to omit a reference that would show the Depart

ment of Finance knowing in 2009 that Quinn Group had a CFD position.

There were a lot of improprieties associated with the Quinn Group, espe

cially related to the support of Anglo’s share price. The problem was that

Anglo had beneﬁted from Quinn’s support and indirectly therefore so had

the state. If the support was illegal and had been approved by Anglo and

the State then the State might ultimately have to suer some of the loss that

it in the end seemed determined to dump on Quinn himself and his group.

The Central Bank came to a weird, presumably embarrassed, settlement

with Quinn Direct Insurance, the vehicle for the share support, and some of

its directors. In December 2019 the Central Bank entered a settlement agree-

ment with Liam McCarey in his capacity as a former director of Quinn

Insurance which had made losses of €905m in 2009, and €160m in 2010

partly through loans made by Quinn Insurance to fund speculative invest

ments for other Quinn family companies, to cover falling stock-market

investments and ﬁnance share-buying in Anglo Irish Bank.

In 2008, Quinn Insurance was ﬁned a record €3.25 million by the Finan

cial Regulator though in the circumstances of its dire state, and

compromisingly for all involved, it was never levied. A related private High

Court judge-chaired Central Bank inquiry into suspected participation by

Directors Liam McCarey and Kevin Lunney in breaches of regulations relat-

ing to accounting and controls was settled without comment, and

compromisingly, by the Central Bank in 2019. McCarey seems to have had

CFDs in Anglo shares worth €1.6m with the source of €500,000 of his fund

ing ultimately being the Quinn Group.

Another blind eye, this time to the beneﬁt of Sean Quinn and the Quinn

family, was turned by regulatory authorities to the unresolved mess that

was Quinn assets in faraway places. The Quinn family settled a bitter dis-

pute with IBRC in 2019, having originally claimed that Anglo Irish Bank had

illegally given them €2.35 billion in loans at the height of the ﬁnancial crisis

to prop up a stake in the bank before it failed. An execution of a judgment

against the Quinns for €440 million was stayed on condition that they

helped secure the return to IBRC of valuable assets in their international

property group. The bank had moved to seize the properties in 2011.

The asset recovery operation, known as QIPG Reﬁnance Ltd, was set up

in 2013 to go after a portfolio of oce blocks, shopping malls and logistics

warehouses – once worth €500 million – that had been used as collateral

against loans from Anglo for share support. The bank moved to seize the

properties in 2011.

A not-for-proﬁt organisation Cavan, Fermanagh Leitrim Community Group

(CFL), was formed on Easter Monday 2014. It felt Anglo Irish Bank, which

initiated the receivership of Quinn Group, had sold the company and com

munity short. Its main aims and objectives were to protect jobs and the

factories that Quinn had built in the area, to keep it from being broken up

but rather locally controlled for the beneﬁt of the community. Over the next

year it put out a lot of propaganda targeting Aventas, then running Quinn

Group, but de-Quinned.

Quiet recent settlement by Centrl Bnk with pst nd

current Quinn Group hed, McCffrey

Alterntive letter incorrectly implied

Anglo didn’t lend for CFDs

12 March/April 2022

CFL organised meetings of up to ten

thousand protestors, claimed the sup

port of 90,000 and met politicians, local

and national, and management; but it got

nowhere.

It initiated a campaign of protests and

of erecting posters and signs at all major

road junctions and at entrances to all pro-

duction sites on both sides of the border.

This was designed to deter any prospec-

tive suitors, including the circling

vultures, that might consider diving in to

cherry-pick individual businesses. It kept

the obstruction up for the next three

years and successfully prevented any

sale of what the community considered

its assets. For example the letter exhib

ited on page 13 [top] successfully

intimitated one company into not going

ahead with its planned purchase of

Quinn Packaging.

CFL realised that to advance its objec

tives to the next stage it needed to put in

place a management buyout. This it

started to engineer by approaching the

previous management team, led by

former Quinn directors, to set up an

entity to buy the business back. QBRC

(Quinn Business Retention Company)

was formed for that purpose.

CFL dedicated itself to assisting in this

process which lasted almost a full year.

Letters were circulated to all local GAA

football clubs and businesses seeking

support for the QBRC bid [top image].

In 2014 one of CFL’s members arranged

a meeting in Dublin with a potential

ﬁnancier to secure funding for QBRC. A

facility of £115m was agreed in principle,

with Endless LLP in London, to buy the

concrete and packaging businesses in

Derrylin - giving QBRC an opportunity to

acquire the rest in due course.

The process kicked o in February

2014 and gained signiﬁcant momentum

in the following months. One of the CFL

members asked Liam McCarey, former

Quinn Group CEO, to facilitate a local

management buy-out and he called a

meeting for the next day at which all ex-

directors agreed it was a good idea. All

agreed QBRC would be a vehicle to get

the businesses back for the Quinns and

the Community. A spokesperson for CFL

said the reason for the obsessive focus

on Quinn was simple: “Quinn was our

champion when the State did nothing”.

When the bondholders saw this inter

vention was imminent and to avoid

further hassle they agreed to go along

with the community’s vision and pre-

empt the Endless LLP facility.

Meanwhile, when it became a reality

that QBRC had secured funding to buy

part of the business, three of the 43

bondholders realised that they hadn’t a

hope of selling Quinn Glass.

It had dawned on them that eventually

it would be bought by QBRC as no out-

sider would buy in such a hostile

environment. Glass was the jewel in the

crown and was worth in excess of

€400m. The quick-thinking three bond-

holders did a deal with the other 40 to

buy their debt - at a knock-down price. So

if Glass alone could be sold they would

clear almost all their debt!

The deal was so good that they decided

to fuel it with a covert donation to QBRC.

€6 million [below left] plus lucrative con

tracts were agreed. CFL should have

been following what was going on, more

closely.

What happened couldn’t have worked

without QBRC’s involvement which

depended on CFL’s support, so it had to

be timed during the window when the

incendiary local community was well dis-

posed to the new management.

The community was happy that its

interest was represented by the people it

chose to represent it, holding – it consid

ered - in trust for it.

Later it was agreed it would buy back

everything except Glass and Radiators.

At the time the Anglo-Celt editorialised

that the “formal £100m bid for the former

Quinn Group businesses (excluding

Quinn Glass) to the Aventas Group is

encouraging”. While deploring intimida-

tion it noted, “Whether or not you are a

Quinn supporter” it would be “a crying

One of the documents drwn up between bondholders

nd QBRC, behind CFL’s bck. The hightlighted text gives 

formul relting to sle price of the glss plnt which ws

c €440 million in the end. 1% of €440 million is €4.4

million nd 4% of €40 million is €1.6 million. So QBRC ws

to get €6 million. Nobody knows where the money went.

CFL seeking the return of Quinn nd

preservtion of communities, 2014

The Quinn Group and

its advisors considered

it could repay the

€2.8 billion it owed

including the €2.34

billion it owed Anglo for

share support. Others

say that would have

depended on Quinn

retaining institutional

conﬁdence that he had

done a great deal to

lose

March/April 2022 13

shame if the business empire he built over four

decades and the employment it brought to an

otherwise forgotten part of Ireland, were to

crumble”. Cavan County Council backed the

bid.

In December 2014 Sean Quinn famously

served a tray of drinks to a meeting which had

agreed that McCarey would be CEO on €500k

salary, Kevin Lunney would be COO at €345k

and Quinn would be consultant on €500k. 11%

of the Quinn Industrial Holdings would be

owned by QBRC and another 11% by the same

entity QBRC but in trust for its Directors who

described themselves as “Sponsors”. On the

recommendation of Sean Quinn Fine Gael

Councillor John McCartin (apparently compro-

misingly), Ernie Fisher And John Bosco

O’Hagan, all with links to the community,

secured lucrative salaries as well as director-

ships, and were the sole shareholders in QBRC

with its ambiguous 22% of what remained of

the Quinn Group. The future of the community

rested with them.

An email from Liam McCarey said “As you

will see from our mission statement the sole

motivation driving this initiative is to protect

the economic wellbeing of this local area ensur-

ing that the former Quinn Group business is

local managed and controlled for the beneﬁt of

this community and most importantly kept

“whole” and not disposed of piecemeal”.

As far as CFL and the community was con-

cerned this was mission-accomplished. How

naïve they were: this couldn’t have been further

from the truth. The wording of commitments

from the new management such as from

McCarey above was inadequate to guarantee

the community control or any stake in the prof

its, though arguably it actually owns the stake

as beneﬁciary.

Everything unravelled. The boys and Quinn

did not get on, and he was sacked, to CFL’s

horror. The directors have not been responsive

to the community and have not facilitated the

intended return to business for Sean Quinn.

In June 2016 CFL asked for a meeting with

the management team in QIH with concerns at

how the company was being run. QIH facili-

tated this meeting which had some frank

exchanges. They said Quinn brought ongoing

reputational damage to the Company. It was

the last meeting.

CFL set up a Facebook group and publicised

some embarrassing things about McCarey,

who had been incumbent CEO of the Quinn

Group when the receiver was appointed, and

now was CEO of QIH, including an allegation

that he had diverted a £97,000 invoice due to

be paid by a UK-based business called Nu-Span

that he and his wife owned, for a steel delivery,

to QIH. CFL alleged [see Complaint, extreme

bottom] there had been no declaration of a

Director’s interest and while there had been an

adjustment to the Quinn account no money had

actually been paid in to reconcile the invoice

for £97,000. It alleged on another occasion

a c €30k credit note was issued to Nu-Span

ﬂooring without proper consultation with the

relevant divisional manager, though there

was already concern about the £97,000 and

though €30,000 was three or four times the

normal credit limit. The man who drew atten-

tion to these improprieties, Denis Doogan, a

director of QIH and a director of Nu-Span was

sacked. The women who furnished him with

the information changed their stories. Sean

Quinn also went to the Garda with complaints

that €167,063 in credit notes were irregularly

made out by Quinn Cement to its biggest

rival, Irish Cement, part of the CRH Group.

In 2016 Sean Quinn wrote to Councillor

John McCartin:

“The four million [he should have said six

million] pound golden handshake or bribe,

call it what you may, that QBRC was to be

paid to facilitate the sale of glass, has since

through some accounting wizardry never

made its way to QBRC and mark my words we

will leave no stone unturned in relation to

investigating what has actually taken place

here once we have possession of all the

facts. At this juncture, needless to say, it is

blatantly obvious that a fundamental conﬂict

of interest exists for the three senior direc-

tors of Quinn Building Products to continue

with their directorship positions on the board

of QBRC”.

And of course by this time the money

raised by QBRC for certain aims had gone

into the Company though it was clear that

neither Quinn Building Products nor QBRC

was at any stage serious about implement-

ing the original mandate. The company was

being run – as would ordinarily be the case

- in the ﬁnancial interests of shareholders

rather than the long-term interest of the com-

munity which appeared had a subtantial

stake in it, as beneﬁciary. On the occasion of

the sale of each Glass, Plastics and Radiators

– none of which was in the spirit of the agree-

ment - senior executives achieved signiﬁcant

pay-outs. It is this dynamic that is now being

tested in the High Court by CFL.

The sale of Glass has put the jobs of 300

workers at risk. With Quinn Glass having two

plants, one at Derrylin (23 years old) and the

other the most modern glass plant in Europe,

at Elton in the UK: a new plant) it is a concern

for the community that the older plant will be

closed at some stage in the future. Moreover

€50m of proﬁts annually has been repatri-

ated to Spain, as can be seen in the accounts

of the new parent company for Glass.

This was totally contrary to what QBRC’s

aims and objectives were created to be; and

the reason today why so much ill feeling,

anger and diehard Sean Quinnery prevail in

the community.

Internl QIH document showing it ws investigting

llegtions of impropriety by McCffrey with Nu-spn

Letter drfted by Lim McCffrey for CFL to send to

RPC Continers to deter them from buying Quinn

Pckging, 2014