Of course, this is no surprise. The banks, in sitting around afraid to move on any of the major and medium-sized property developers, have given them ample time (some 18 months now) to rearrange their affairs. The personal guarantees provided by these developers will be worth very little to the banks. I would guess that most of these guarantees are worded such that the developer simply provides a guarantee backed by personal assets but there will be easy ways to transfer these assets such that the banks cannot get hold of them.
An interesting situation seems to be Sean Dunne, where rumour has it that a lot of his personal assets are now based in France, well away from the hands of the Irish banks.
This situation has been exercising the minds of the banks for some time. Personal guarantees have usually been based on assests that the borrower owns - in the old days the banks didn’t factor in a wife/partner claim. There are a couple of high profile characters out there whose trophy wives might fancy making off with half of whats left of the assets. It was the Lynne case that sparked the panic - a relationship can conveniently be ‘over’ to save half the assets.
Assets in France won’t protect Dunne BTW - I believe there is reciprocity there.
