ANGLO Irish Bank’sincoming chairman believes the bank will still be around in 10 years and could be sold to benefit the taxpayer.
Former finance minister and leader of Fine Gael Alan Dukes is to be the new chairman of the state- owned bank.
Mr Dukes, who early on backed Fianna Fáil’s bad bank proposal, will replace Donal O’Connor, who helped the bank negotiate its way through the state takeover just over a year ago. He is expected to leave the post in July.
The change at the top follows the bank’s announcement on Thursday that it has taken legal action against former chairman Sean FitzPatrick to recover loans of €70 million.
Mr Dukes said on national radio yesterday that he confidently expected the bank to still be around in 10 years time and that it could be "floated off" at some point in the future.
Anglo has had €4 billion of state aid pumped into it and may need a further €6bn to survive as an independent entity.
Finance Minister Brian Lenihan paid tribute to Mr O’Connor’s work at a challenging time for the bank and the financial system.
Mr O’Connor said he had taken on the role as executive chairman six monthsafter being appointed a director and the bank had been radically transformed in the meantime.
With the scale of the bank about to be significantlyreduced, a major cost reduction programme well advanced and with a newsenior management team in place, including six external appointments, "the bank is now in a position that allows me to move on," he said.
Mr Dukes added that Mr O’Connor had "played a central role in laying the groundwork for the transformation of Anglo Irish Bank and in preparing it to be a constructive player in the future of the Irish banking sector.
"Our objective in restructuring is to create a bank that can be a viable entity," he said.
He rejected the idea of winding down the bank, an option some experts said the Government should have exercised. Such a move would cost €20bn if a wind -up process was initiated at this stage, Mr Dukes said.
Keeping the bank operational will probably cost the state a lot less, provided the bank is re-capitalised by the Government and continues to operate as a going concern, he added.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Saturday, March 13, 2010
