Woolnough: Ireland in need

IRELAND IN NEED

As Ireland's fiscal situation worsens and it prepares to accept an EU bailout, M&G's Richard Woolnough ponders solutions to the country's crisis.

Woolnough, who manages more than $9.5bn across three M&G fixed income vehicles, says there is no doubt Ireland needs the assistance of its neighbours in Europe, but suggests the country will struggle to solve its liquidity problems over the long run. "Ireland is definitely facing a liquidity crisis, and that liquidity crisis could evolve rightly or wrongly into a solvency crisis. It needs help. "Like any such problem, that help involves emergency short-term measures (basically cash funding) and long-term advice and financing to solve its structural long-term problems," Woolnough says....