Gone West
June 16, 2012 10:12 AM   Subscribe

Westlife singer Shane Filan has been declared bankrupt after owing €5.5m due to the collapse of the Irish property bubble.

Ponzi financing and the property bubble.
Housing bubble blights Ireland's pastoral charms.
Other pop stars whose investments have gone south.
posted by fearfulsymmetry (3 comments total)
 
Well, unlike half the poor bastards underwater in Ireland he got declared bankrupt by a UK court, thus escaping the horrifically punitive insolvency situation in Ireland. I know I should have empathy even for developers who sought to make a quick euro, but it's hard to do when I know so many people struggling to make payments on the shoddily constructed piles thrown up all over the country with no hope of any alleviation of their sufferings (what makes me even madder is that many of them bought because protection for Irish tenants us so dreadful that there is basically no recourse against greedy or appalling landlords).
posted by lesbiassparrow at 11:30 AM on June 16, 2012


Although from what I can tell there isn't much that's different in a general sense between US and UK courts on this, the language is so strange to hear. In the UK, a court declares you bankrupt; in the US you declare bankruptcy. It just sounds so much more statist that way.
posted by dhartung at 11:44 AM on June 16, 2012 [1 favorite]


A while ago I read an article about a bunch of chaps who went abroad and lived in Wales in the cheapest place they could find, with some hardly-paying-at-all job, where the trick was to stay there just long enough to get the bankruptcy processed by UK courts, just to avoid the Irish laws.
posted by DreamerFi at 2:18 AM on June 17, 2012


« Older Walk the Dog + Motion Control = STAY!   |   Too many trainee positions in biomedical research Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments