Drummer, Freddie Fly and the badger – how Anglo Tapes brought trial to life
IT WAS in the now-infamous Anglo Tapes that this trial really came to life.
These were phone calls between the bankers; most knew they were being recorded as part of standard practice but it’s impossible to know how alert they were to this in the white heat of the unfolding crisis.
As their decade-old conversations were played back to the jury, from the end of crackly phone lines and through streams of fast-talking, often foul-mouthed bravado and gales of nervous laughter, the players in this debacle finally came into focus.
In one of the most revealing calls, David Drumm was heard describing financial regulator Patrick Neary as “f**king Freddie f**king Fly” and the Central Bank as a “shower of clowns”. This was on September 19, before Anglo got emergency funding during the financial crisis, the jury heard.
He and head of Capital Markets John Bowe were heard discussing getting cash from Irish Life and Permanent (ILP). On this call, Drumm was not aware he was being recorded.
“You can’t take it off f ***ing Freddie f**king Fly down there, the financial regulator, because it will appear on the balance sheet,” he said.
Drumm also spoke about getting money from the Central Bank. “We’ll be saying, ‘Yeah, a stress because HBOS were f ***ing sold and Lehman’s went bust and f ***ing Bank of America f ***ing took over Merrill’s and other f ***ing non-normal things happened,” Drumm said.
“We need the f***ing loan because we are running out of money,” he said. He said he was going to “keep it simple.”
“I’m going to keep asking the thick question: ‘When, when is the cheque arriving?’,” he said, adding: “If we say it in their language, nothing will happen. You have it, so you’re going to give it to us and when would that be? We’ll start there,” he said. “If they don’t give it to us on Monday, they have a bank collapse. If the money keeps running out the door the way it has been running out the door.”
On September 22, the two men again discussed the bank’s situation and Mr Drumm at one point asked about what would happen if they got “€4bn or whatever from that f***ing shower of clowns down on Dame Street”.
Drumm himself spoke frequently about the seriousness of Anglo’s troubles, describing sending a letter to the financial regulator about a breach of liquidity rules as “signing a death warrant.”
Elsewhere, he predicted, “we’re f***ed,” even including the €6bn “fixes” he said were confirmed by “Mr f ***ing Denis” – a reference to ILP’s Denis Casey, according to the prosecution.
Drumm wasn’t alone in his use of colourful turns of phrase on the phone to his banking colleagues.
In September 2008, CFO Matt Moran and Mr Bowe were heard discussing an upcoming meeting with Ewen Stevensen of Credit Suisse and how a proposed deal with that bank would be broached.
“If I can get a bit of drink into him, I might say to him, ‘I’d like about €5bn before the 30th’,” Mr Moran said. “Get him to sign the beer mat,” Mr Bowe said.
Nearly everyone referenced in the calls was easily enough identified from context, despite the bankers’ fondness for nicknames – “Drummer”, “Johnny Wonder,” “Kaner”, “Gants” or, less cordially, “Mr F***ing Denis”.
But exactly who “the rock star” or “the badger” were, both referenced in the same call, was again left to the jury’s imagination.