The Irish flag flew proudly over the Department of Finance on Merrion Street Dublin, as the Irish Government, following a night of negotiations last week took a giant step towards solving the Irish "credit crisis". In a crisis, decisive moves have to be made. There were effectively two choices, nationalisation/recapitalisation on a piecemeal basis, or the system solution opted for. While questions of economic efficiency and moral hazard do validly arise as a result of the guarantee solution, the alternative - the risk of economic contagion on a mass scale - was clearly not the right option.

The Irish Government has lodged a formal objection to a proposal made by the European Commission to reform securitisations originating in the European Union, including Ireland. Ireland's international financial services industry has vital interests in the area - the Irish Stock Exchange is one of the world's leading venues for listing of asset backed securities and securitiisations, while the IFSC is also one of Europe's largest centres for investment in ABS. Confirming the objection, a Department of Finance spokesman told FINANCE that 'key points' of the proposal were in need of 'further analysis.'

EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy announces that EU will regulate credit rating agencies at Finance Dublin Conference

Charlie McCreevy, annnounced at the conference on Monday 16th that the EU was going to regulate credit rating agencies, while Commissioner Paul Atkins gave similar indications that the move might be reflected in the United States. on June 17th the Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan gave an assurance that the IFSC will not lose out as a result of the "No" vote in the Lisbon treaty referendum and Patrick Neary, CEO of The Irish Financial Regulator said banks need in future to be clear about the incentives paid to executives and why.

The valuation of hard to value securities has not proved any major problem whilst the markets have been liquid and bullish, however, this has changed with declining markets and an almost total evaporation of liquidity. The original concept of ‘marking to model’ has gone and now administrators (and managers) endeavor to ‘mark to market’. The problem with ‘fair value’ is how you would determine what is fair or, for that matter, what is unfair value? writes Dermot Butler.

Employment in Ireland’s international financial services industry continued to grow in 2007, rising 8.2 per cent in the year, to surpass 25,000 for the first time, according to figures compiled from entries for IFSC and other Irish international financial services firms in the 2008 Finance Dublin Yearbook.

The future for the pooling of multinational pension assets received a major breakthrough that opens the door for US pensions assets to pool in vehicles under the Common Contractual Fund (CCF).

Irish lenders can expect to be affected by developments in the capital markets just like institutions both in the US and the UK. NEIL WARMAN discusses funding for Irish lenders in current market conditions.

Dublin has climbed a further two places, to thirteenth place, in a new index of the attractiveness of the world’s financial centres published by the City of London, the GFCI Index, the third of which has just been published. In the first of the series, published in July 2007, Dublin was placed in 22nd position, rising to 15th in a subsequent index published in September last, and to 13th now.

The proposed reforms which will create a passport allowing funds to be administered in any European jurisdiction, rather than the country where the fund is authorised, needs some clarification before any European directive on the matter can be passed, according to the Irish Funds Industry Association (IFIA), while many companies within the Irish industry favour more open passporting in Europe.

As he steps down from his CEO role at Life Strategies, an IFSC company itself, which can be credited with an instrumental role in the creation of an entire IFSC sector - the international IFSC life business - COLM FAGAN talks about the formation of the sector, and its future prospects.

Newly appointed heads of the IFSC groups of banking and treasury, insurance and funds set the IFSC agenda for their respective groups in official statements passed by the Department of An Taoiseach.

FRANK MONKS urges IFSC companies to contribute to the ongoing pensions debate.

After almost a decade in development, 2008 is the year that capital requirements under the Basel Accord become an imperative for all financial institutions in Europe. However, it coincides with a credit crunch, liquidity crisis, massive write-downs on banks’ structured products and falling profits. MARIE MANGAN discusses what firms can do to strengthen their risk management regimes while riding the tide of economic downturn and coping in a more risk-sensitive prudential capital world.

The global press attending the sixth annual Finance Dublin Securitisation conference held on Monday 26 and Tuesday 27 have picked up on the keynote address of John Hurley, Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland and member of the Board of Governors of the European Central Bank. Leading industry practitioners that addressed delegates included Georg Grodzki, Global Head of Credit Research, Legal & General, Iain Barbour, Managing Director, MBIA UK Insurance Limited, and Moorad Choudhry, Visiting Professor, Department of Economics, London Metropolitan University, and Visiting Research Fellow, ISMA Centre, University of Reading.

As a quarter of multinational company pension funds are reported as considering how they can establish European cross border pension funds, the Pan European Pensions Task Force of the Irish Government hosted the Pan European Pensions Summit 2007, organised and produced by Finance Dublin at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin on Tuesday. Click here to see a gallery of photographs taken at the conference.

The continuing debate around the regulation of hedge funds has reached the level of the G7 with Hank Paulson, US treasury secretary, saying that the sector 'bears looking at' while Internal Markets Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy and German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, remain on opposite sides of the regulation debate. Charlie McCreevy, Internal Markets and services Commissioner told Finance Dublin this month, that, 'unfocused further intervention runs the risk of causing more problems than might be resolved'. The hot topic of the regulation of this thriving sector has reached the forefront of debate by the ruling powers on both sides of the Atlantic. Dublin hosted the on-going transatlantic debate on hedge fund regulation and other topics on the global agenda such as the creation of a Trans Atlantic capital market at the Finance Dublin annual conference in Dublin Castle on March 26th-27th.

Following the streamlining of the approval period for Qualifying Investor Funds (QIFs) the investment vehicle has experienced a renaissance. GAVIN NANGLE outlines the process that brought about the change in the approval period and lists the benefits of the faster authorisation process.