Once mighty Quinn suffers a further fall from grace

BILLIONAIRE Irish businessman Sean Quinn fell further from grace yesterday after Dublin's High Court appointed a provisional administrator to Ireland's largest insurer.

Quinn Insurance was put under the control of the state after the country's financial watchdog said it had grave concerns over its solvency.

Quinn, once Ireland's richest man and dubbed "Mighty Quinn", has already seen an estimated 1 billion (889 million) wiped off his personal wealth after investing heavily in complex Anglo-Irish Bank share deals months before its collapse.

That move has proved to be a monumental mistake for the usually-shrewd 63-year-old's multi-national business empire.

The Financial Regulator found that Quinn Insurance paid loans worth 288m to other companies in the group and said it suspected the firm of breaching financial rules by failing to notify it.

It said the company had gone from a position of having assets of 200m more than liabilities to having liabilities 200m greater than assets. Officials are now on the company floor overseeing the day-to-day workings at Quinn Direct, which offers motor, home and business policies, and Quinn Healthcare.

It is understood the firm's solvency levels were being monitored before the regulator stepped in. Quinn Insurance, which employs almost 2,800 people in Ireland and the UK, will continue to trade as normal, but the regulator has ordered the "currently unprofitable" UK arm to stop writing new business.

The Quinn Group said it was "deeply disappointed" by the decision, saying that the group's "continued profitability" was more than 20m per month. "We feel that this issue could have been resolved to the benefit of all in a relatively short space of time," it added.