By Business & Finance 
The new Department of Finance chief represents a new breed of civil servants who have earned their spurs in the private sector.
John Moran is secretary general of the Department Finance. As head of Ireland’s Department of Finance, having previously been head of Banking at the Department, he is responsible for economic, budgetary and fiscal, banking and financial service policy matters and the oversight of Ireland’s investments in and support for covered banks.
Moran has been responsible for the design and implementation of the necessary reform and reorganisation of the Irish banking sector, including rationalisation and deleveraging plans and capital and liability management.
Prior to his position at the Department of Finance, Moran was head of Wholesale Bank Supervision at the Central Bank of Ireland from 2010-2011. In this role he was responsible for the supervision of wholesale banks, largely IFSC and other non-retail international banks and the retail operations of certain foreign banks, bank branches in Ireland and new credit institution approvals.
He was also responsible for the broader Prudential Analytics team, the enhanced bank inspection team and a unit responsible for the development of an enhanced credit register and the SRR. Since November 2010, he lead the development of the bank deleveraging plans for the IMF/EU/ECB memorandum of understanding – a role which also includes the development of a vision for the future banking system in Ireland. Moran represented Ireland at the EBAGroupe de Contact and the BIS International Banking Supervisors meetings in 2010.
For eight years from 1997, Moran was CEO and Board member of Zurich Bank. During this time, Moran secured a ground-breaking change in Irish banking rules to permit a license for a bank within an insurance group. He played a leading role structuring and raising in excess of $1 billion of sub-LIBOR structured capital and funding, generating the opportunity in Dublin for profitable hedge fund lending.
Moran built and managed a cross disciplinary team including a treasury operations which provided an additional $1.5+ billion of funding to the ZCM group and conducts ZFS groupwide treasury and trading operations. He also repositioned Zurich Bank within ZFS during 2004 to become the centre of treasury dealing for ZFS and also the headquarters of Zurich Banking, the new banking unit of ZFS. As head of Business Development for Zurich Banking, Moran transacted the bank’s largest deal in 2005, the $60m refinancing of an Italian hotel group, before leaving the Zurich group at the end of that year.
From 1994-1997, Moran was resident solicitor at the New York office of McCann FitzGerald law firm. He was VP Legal of the GPA Group from 1990-1994 and associate attorney of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP from 1987-1990.
On leaving CBS in Limerick, Moran went on to study law at UCD. On qualifying, he went to New York and took the New York bar exams by the time he was 21. From there, he studied for a Masters in Philadelphia.
He is a fellow of the Institute of Bankers in Ireland and former chairman of the Swiss Irish Business Association. Moran is currently completing a MSc Financial Mathematics at Dublin City University.
