Exclusive: Recording Of Brian Lenihan's Citi Conference Call With Perturbed Investors

This weekend’s chief financial tragicomedy was without doubt the busted conference call conducted by Citi, in which Ireland finance minister Brian Lenihan ended being heckled openly by a roster of about 200 people, who were a little late in realizing that the operator had forgotten to mute all their lines. This was described previously in painful detail by the Telegraph. And while Ireland is still refusing to acknowledge that anything out of the ordinary happened, and Citi has most certainly deleted any copies of the first part of the conference call, the second part of the call was obtained by Zero Hedge. What is obvious from the call is the extreme sensitivity the operators and organizers have toward any open line, while proffering extreme apologies for the confusion that was prevalent on Part 1 of the call, which apparently lasted for 45 minutes (the entire call ended up being one hour thirty minutes, after it was supposed to be half that duration). Furthermore, if as Ireland claims none of the alleged shenanigans occurred, then why is the first thing uttered by the moderator his “profound apologies for the foul up that the conference provider has had earlier.” As for the call itself, we fail to see how someone who claims there is no local deposit drain (like in Greece) due to “Ireland being an island” and thus making deposit evacuation difficult, is supposed to calm investors and result in tightening spreads. Although, as we disclosed earlier, the ECB’s €1.4 billion in sovereign bond purchases last week, successfully unraveled that particular mystery as well. For all this, and much more, as well as a rather amusing Q&A, the link to the entire call is attached below.