David Drumm: ‘There is a witch hunt ... I convince myself that this will pass’

An Irish Central exclusive interview with the former Anglo Irish Bank boss now in US

Bertie Ahern got up on the stump up in Donegal in the middle of 07 and said anyone who talks Ireland down should actually kill themselves. When I was on the road with the bank, with investors and what have you, we talked about Ireland, we talked about it because we believed in it, in the most positive terms. Young people, a young demographic, that critical 25-35 age group of people coming through, smart, educated, hungry, English speaking , meaning we had an edge from a U.S. perspective and from the U.S. coming into Europe perspective, productivity, ingenuity, a 12.5 percent tax rate, just everything that could be good for a country was there. And that Ireland was actually not booming, it was correcting to where it belonged. And there wasn’t a person you would meet in Ireland and in the UK, in Europe and the U.S., where I traveled with the bank for the years that I was CEO, who wouldn’t agree with that.

NOD: Do you think you will ever see Ireland again?

DD: I hope so.

NOD: People say well why don’t you come back?

DD: I would not be treated fairly. This is a country that I, I spent 16 years in the bank, I was beyond loyal to that bank, maybe too loyal, and a country that I believed in 100 percent, marketed 100 percent as I was marketing the bank, I was marketing the country, everywhere I went. Now the way that I am being depicted by that country, by the country’s media, or participants is completely and utterly unfair. I am here trying to make a living and raise my family, which I am entitled to do. Why would I go somewhere which has stated, politicians, senior ministers and even High Court Judges have more of less stated that there is a witch hunt on and we are going to get him, why would somebody put their family at risk by signing up for that.

NOD: Being viewed as public enemy number one or two, but do you feel that this is a completely incorrect characterization of your role in Anglo Irish, obviously  a critical part of that role was your relationship with Sean Fitzpatrick. What is your opinion of him now?

DD: Perspective, the bank for 21-years in a row increased its profits; it went from making nothing to making a billion. But it wasn’t a flash in the pan that happened for two years, like some sort of scheme. The bank started in very humble beginnings, City Dublin Bank and Irish Bank of Commerce merging in the mid-1980s and grew it’s business progressively over time, first in Ireland, then into the UK and then ultimately into the U.S. doing the same thing everywhere. There was no big change in the model or running after real estate of what have you. The bank was always a real estate lender. If you got as far as 2007, as you said, the profits of the bank that year were a billion. At the same time the end of 07 start of 08, the global financial crisis began and at the same time the Irish housing market had begun to correct, it was overbuilt.

The governor of the Central Bank said to me during the earlier part of 2008 that Ireland could handle its own correction in the housing market, that it was stable enough to do that but could not handle both; i.e. the international meltdown and its own domestic correction. The fiscal situation was appalling at that stage in Ireland because all of the tax money that had come in from this boom had been spent expanding the public purse and it was very hard to turn that profit back.

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Nster.com