How Ireland’s richest man Sean Quinn ended up utterly bankrupt

Terrible financial decisions all led to catastrophic results -- retraces Quinn’s missteps

By

KERRY O'SHEA,

IrishCentral Staff Writer

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Sean Quinn

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During the crash in 2008, the Quinns, desperate again for cash in the wake of their stock market losses, began to expand “like crazy” in the UK. However, they began writing insurance business that turned out to be fundamentally loss-making. The Financial Regulator was forced to put Quinn Insurance into administration under Grant Thornton, the accountants in 2010.

A report, due to be filed in the High Court by Grant Thornton in the coming weeks, is expected to reveal there is a hole of between $100 million and $1.26 billion in its reserves. The general public will be forced to foot this staggering bill by paying a new charge on insurance policies.

When the technology bubble burst around 2001, Sean Quinn borrowed almost $330 million from Anglo Irish Bank to bail his business out. Quinn still owes the taxpayer-owned bank around $108 million relating to this today.

In 2008, when the Celtic Tiger was crashing, Sean Quinn bet $200m on the Japanese yen. He took the yen position as a way of getting access to funds on a lower interest rate in a sophisticated financial transaction. This backfired when the yen appreciated, costing him tens of millions of Euro.

Lastly, the Quinns own two wind farms along the border. In 2006 Sean Quinn made a high-risk decision not to sell excess power generated that he didn't need for his own plants on a contract basis to energy companies. Rather, Quinn opted to sell the excess power on a one-off basis whenever prices were high. While that decision initially paid off, it later produced losses as wind energy prices fell because of the recession costing millions of euro, leaving the Irish with another bill to foot.

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