Buckley’s chance pays off

Allied Irish Bank chief executive Michael Buckley was never expected to make it this far, but AIB’s recent record results and successful Polish push suggest he might make it to retirement, Kyran Fitzgerald reports.

LAST May, there were few people around who would have laid money on AIB Group CEO Michael Buckley being around to retire on the originally scheduled February 2006 date, but barring yet another cataclysm down in Ballsbridge, it looks as if this indeed will be the case.

To say that Buckley's tenure has been accident prone is a huge understatement, and yet the man has just popped open the corks on a record set of financial results while many of his critics in the financial world are once again doffing their caps and acknowledging his undoubted strengths.