AIB finds new ways to ‘screw the customer’

ALLIED IRISH BANK’S “culture was wrong and we are now setting down new principles for everyone in the bank from boardroom to branches” — the bank’s executive chairman David Hodgkinson told the Annual MacGill Summer School on Thursday.

Mr Hodgkinson’s speech, at the summer frolics in Donegal, is very informative and waxes lyrical on how the bank is going to change its culture from top to bottom. However, in reality, it’s a load of the “b” word that rhymes with frolics.

Two elements of the 2,440-word speech betray graphically that nothing has really changed. These linked elements can be summed up in just three words that have been core to Allied Irish Bank’s culture for generations and should be the bank’s motto — “screw the customer”.