Pre-tax losses halve to €950m

BANK OF IRELAND incurred pre-tax losses of €950 million in 2010 — half the losses made the previous year of €1.8 billion.

However, the bank was very encouraged by the fact that its operating profit of more than €1bn before bad debt, was down only marginally on the previous year.

Last year’s losses overall were down significantly as the group cut costs and continued to push through its redundancy programme that has seen nearly 2,500 jobs shed in the past 18 months.