No desks. No staff. No tax. Ireland’s shadow banks

Aran Fitzpatrick ‏@aranfitzpatrick

No desks. No staff. No tax. Ireland’s shadow banks
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/financial-services/no-desks-no-staff-no-tax-ireland-s-shadow-banks-1.1388923#.UY_v_z_v3wM.twitter … via @IrishTimes
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It might not look big enough to house them all, but this modest-sized building is home to about 250 companies. One is Orpington Structured Finance I. It has gross assets of €1.7 billion, which would make it one of the most valuable firms in Ireland. Except it has no employees. It has no buildings or machinery. Nor does it pay any tax.

It is one of hundreds of so-called financial-vehicle corporations, which are companies set up to house or trade in securitised investments, in other words to package and resell loans.

It’s part of a much wider area of financial activity known as shadow banking, a term coined five years ago when the US economist Paul McCulley defined the area as the “whole alphabet soup of levered-up non-bank investment conduits, vehicles and structures”.

(More at the link.)