The rise and fall of one man, one bank and one country
Sean FitzPatrick is Irelands most controversial banker. He took an obscure bank, Anglo
Irish and turned it into Irelands 3rd biggest with an international reputation for
extraordinary profits. He was the darling of the Celtic Tiger. However, when the worlds
economy faltered, the true nature of what had happened behind closed doors at Anglo
was revealed and FitzPatrick resigned in disgrace.
One day in May 2009, Sean FitzPatrick sat down to lunch in a Holiday Inn in Dublin.
Across the table sat Tom Lyons, a business reporter with the Sunday Times.
Seven months later the two met for the first of what would be seventeen formal tape-
recorded interviews over the course of 2010: a year when Ireland, its public finances
ruined in large part by the cost of covering Anglos losses, went bust itself. In these
interviews, FitzPatrick talked at length and in detail about his banking experiences and
philosophy, his colleagues and clients, his investments, his public disgrace, his arrest and
his bankruptcy.
Lyons and Carey, who have been covering the Anglo story since the banks crisis began
in 2007, have drawn on FitzPatricks tapes and on their many sources within Anglo, the
state and the business community to tell the story of the crisis and of the man who
became the face of it. This is a tale of toothless regulators, hopeless accountants,
politicians and civil servants out of their depth, and businessmen in denial about the
crash. Above all, it is the story of Sean FitzPatrick: the man who built the bank that has
been at the centre of Irelands economic meltdown.
