QUINN DEBT RESTRUCTURING PASSED BY BONDHOLDERS

The last obstacle to the sale of Quinn Insurance to a Liberty Mutual-led joint venture was removed yesterday as creditors gathered in London to vote on a restructuring of Quinn Group's debt. An extra €250m ($342m) of the loans will be moved from Quinn Group to a non-core entity. Quinn Group CEO Paul O'Brien called the deal a landmark for the business. Quinn Group now owes €500m, down from the €1.3bn that it owed when Anglo Irish Bank (now Irish Bank Resolution Corp) seized control from the Quinn family in April. Quinn Insurance was and is profitable at the operating level, but was brought to its knees by the Quinn Group's gamble that the Irish bank crisis would not prove fatal to bank equity holders. Quinn Insurance subsidiaries guaranteed some of the debts built up within the larger Quinn Group. The extent of those debts was revealed in January 2009, when then CEO Sean Quinn admitted that Quinn Group's investments, particularly in Anglo Irish Bank, were "clearly ill-timed, costly, and are very much regretted". Mr Quinn had resigned from the board of Quinn Insurance Ltd in October 2008 after failing to notify the Irish regulator of loans of €288m other Quinn operations. In its 2007 accounts it wrote off €829m in equity investments.