Ireland’s Secret Derivatives Stay Hidden Six Years After Crisis
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Six years ago, an obscure financial instrument hastened the demise of Anglo Irish Bank Corp., the lender which helped drive Ireland into an international bailout. Today, those instruments remain in the shadows.
Two of the bank’s former directors this week face sentencing after being convicted of a loans-for-shares scheme aimed at stopping a secret stake in the lender flooding on to the market in 2008. The family of Ireland’s then richest man had clandestinely built the 28 percent stake, using derivatives known as contracts for difference, or CFDs.