Ex-EBS director: Lending practices were like 'shark eating its own entrails'
A former director of EBS has launched a blistering criticism of lending practices at the building society.
Ethna Tinney, a former member of the EBS credit committee, says she was "inundated" with emails from senior managers, making loan proposals on behalf of developers.
She said she was asked to reply to those applications within two days, and that if the loan was not approved, the business would go elsewhere.
She also spoke out against 'securitisation', the practice where the banks would package mortgages and sell them off to other investors.
She said: "I could not get the image out of my head of a shark eating its own entrails.
"As time went by, it became ever more doubtful that the fundamental banking concept of loans as assets, and indeed of debts in any business as assets.
"The only asset that reassures me is something I can control, and I cannot control the repayment of debt owed to me."
