Ireland's finance minister Brian Lenihan ridiculed by City investors

The Telegraph ^ | 11:41PM BST 01 Oct 2010 | Harry Wilson

[dynachrome]

Mr Lenihan had been speaking for less than two minutes on Friday before a mistake by Citigroup meant that the bank's clients were all able to be heard on the line.

Between 200 and 500 investors are understood to have been on the call, and as they realised their lines were not muted many began to heckle Mr Lenihan.

Some traders began making what one banker on the call described as "chimp sounds", while another cried out "dive, dive". A third man said "short Ireland" before adding "why not short Citi too?"

As the call descended into chaos, with one participant heard to say "this is the worst conference call ever", Citigroup officials shut down the line.

[dynachrome]

Not good. Another 'too big to fail'?

"Finance Minister Brian Lenihan defended the rescue, saying the "nightmare" collapse of Anglo Irish would have pushed the country into insolvency, in remarks redolent of the recent crises in Greece and non-eurozone country Iceland. "Unfortunately this bank grew to half the size of our annual wealth and the failure of a bank of that scale would render the country itself insolvent," he told RTE state radio.

[Gay State Conservative]

Sad (and surprising) to see.”Sad” because I'm of Irish blood...”surprising” because in ‘07,when I was last there,Dublin was *booming*...construction cranes *everywhere* and more BMWs and Mercedes than you could shake a stick at.