Michael ‘Fingers’ Fingleton, one of the villains of Ireland’s 2008 financial crisis

Telegraph ObituariesSat, August 8, 2026 at 5:00 AM UTC

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‘Fingers’ in 1997 opening Irish Nationwide’s new headquarters: when it had to be rescued, the final bill to the Irish taxpayer was €5.4 billion - Jason Clarke

Michael “Fingers” Fingleton, who has died aged 88, played a central role in Ireland’s 2008 financial crisis as the long-serving and highly paid boss of Irish Nationwide Building Society, which ruined itself by high-risk lending.

Fingleton joined the tiny but venerable Irish Independent Building Society as its secretary in 1971. Four years later it rebranded as Irish Nationwide and began to expand, under his autocratic leadership, both by adding branches and agencies and acquiring smaller societies.

As Ireland’s “Celtic Tiger” boom took off in the mid 1990s, Fingleton shifted the society’s focus from traditional deposit accounts and mortgages towards small-scale commercial lending and later to funding for major property developments which eventually accounted for the lion’s share of a €10 billion loan portfolio.

But it transpired that this growth was achieved by committing every sin and folly in the banking lexicon: lending up to 100 per cent of inflated property values, taking equity stakes in risky projects; sometimes failing to take adequate security; and favouring a tight circle of Dublin’s biggest property players, many of whom would come to grief in 2008.

The gregarious “Fingers”, as he was widely known, cultivated media attention not least by offering generous mortgages to journalists and was also a willing lender to public figures, including a former finance minister and an ex-partner of the taioseach Bertie Ahern.

While the going was good in the mid-2000s, Irish Nationwide reported handsome profits and Fingleton reaped remuneration of more than €8 million. But his plan to demutualise the society and sell it, possibly to an Icelandic bank, was derailed by the onset of the crash, in which property values rapidly evaporated and loans against them began to look unpayable across the entire Irish banking sector.

Nevertheless Fingleton collected a €1 million bonus in November 2008, based on 2007’s record profits. But when the extent of potential balance-sheet damage was apparent – and losses of €280 million were reported for 2008 – he came under pressure to return the money. Though he briefly offered to give it to charity, it was never repaid; in April 2009, under pressure from government, he agreed to resign.

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Meanwhile, Irish Nationwide’s loan portfolio was found to be the most toxic among all the Irish lenders that were brought under the umbrella of a state guarantee in September 2008. Its remains were folded with those of Anglo Irish Bank into the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation and from there to the National Asset Management Agency, which eventually recouped fractions of the original loans. The final bill for Irish Nationwide to the Irish taxpayer was €5.4 billion.

A Sinn Fein activist protesting outside Irish Nationwide over Fingleton’s bonus in 2009 - Niall Carson/PA Wire

Michael Fingleton was born in Tubbercurry, Co Sligo, the son of a garda (police officer), in October 1938. Educated at St Nathy’s College in Ballaghadereen, Co Roscommon, he entered All Hallows seminary in Dublin but left before taking vows for the priesthood. He went on to study commerce at University College Dublin, to qualify as an accountant and later to read for the bar at King’s Inns in Dublin.

In the decade before joining Irish Independent, Fingleton worked first for Allied Irish Finance, then for the Dairy Disposal Agency (a state body that took over failed creameries) and in Nigeria for an aid agency which organised food supplies for the war-torn rebel state of Biafra.

A central bank enquiry into Fingleton’s actions at Irish Nationwide was terminated in 2019 after he was incapacitated by a stroke. In a civil case brought by IBRC seeking damages for “profound mismanagement”, Irish Nationwide was accused of operating on the belief that property could only “go up and up and up and up”, while taking a ‘blasé’ attitude to warnings from auditors and regulators.

Michael Fingleton is survived by his wife Eileen and their two sons and two daughters.

Michael Fingleton, born 1938, died August 2 2026

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