Irish & Life Permanent chairman to step down

ROY DOUGLAS will step down as chairman of Irish & Life Permanent early month.

Mr Douglas told shareholders at the institution’s annual general meeting yesterday that he had been chairman of the combined group since 1999 and that he considered it the right time to step aside now that the group had integrated TSB bank into the organisation.

“I see my retirement as the natural conclusion of that process and now is the right time to appoint a new chairman to lead the company into the next phase of its development,” he said.

Mr Douglas, who earned €215,000 last year, will be succeeded by the Budget Travel founder Gillian Bowler. She will become the first woman to head an Irish public company.

Mr Douglas, a former chief executive of Irish Permanent, led the building society to its 1991 stock market listing and engineered the 1999 merger with Irish Life, which created the third-largest financial institution in the country. Three years after that, Irish Life & Permanent acquired TSB bank from the Government.

Shareholders were told yesterday that trading so far this year has been ahead and that it recorded an “exceptional” level of new lending.

“Indeed, the mortgage market as a whole continues to perform very strongly.”