ANGLO IRISH Bank may recover less than half of the €2.8 billion owed to the bank by businessman Seán Quinn and his family, chairman Alan Dukes

ANGLO IRISH Bank may recover less than half of the €2.8 billion owed to the bank by businessman Seán Quinn and his family, chairman Alan Dukes said yesterday.

Anglo was confirmed on Thursday as the joint owner of Quinn Insurance, with US-based Liberty Mutual, and is currently working on a five-year business plan for the Quinn Group, in which the lender seized control of the equity on April 14th.

On RTÉ Radio 1 yesterday morning, Mr Dukes said the financial institution would be able to reduce “very substantially” the provision it has made against the company. Anglo made provisions of €2.2 billion against the Quinns’ €2.8 billion of loans.

However, he said a great deal would depend on how successful the insurance division and other companies within the group could be developed.

“I would clearly like to be able to meet the full provision but it’s unlikely that in a period of five years that we would be able to make a net return of €2.8 billion out of that,” he said.

He estimated that the bank would probably make “less than half” of the money back, but said without the arrangement Anglo would not be able to make as much money back for the taxpayer.

“We’re reducing the risk on the money that we’re owed because we have access to a stream of income that we wouldn’t have access to without this arrangement,” he said.

Mr Dukes said there had been substantial restructuring of debt in companies throughout the Quinn Group.

“We have secured the lifting of guarantees in favour of other companies in the group, which were a burden on the insurance company,” he said.

Seán Quinn and his family have blamed the accountants who have run Quinn Insurance for the last year for the €706 million in losses uncovered at the company. The Quinn family claimed the company had €1.1 billion in assets and €464 million in property when the administrators were appointed.

They said it was inevitable the reported losses would be “substantial” because the administrators were putting aside far greater amounts of money to meet claims than was the norm in the industry.

Separately it has emerged that Irish Nationwide Building Society, which is merging with Anglo Irish Bank Corporation, will close all of its 49 branches by May 17th.

Nationwide began closing branches on April 14th, a spokeswoman for the company confirmed. The building society sold its €3.6 billion of deposits to Irish Life and Permanent in February.