Bank ‘back in business’ with plans to lend over €800m
While growing from a small base, it should see the bank lend over €800m, compared to a total of between €70m and €90m last year.
The bank’s chairman, Alan Cook told shareholders yesterday at the company’s AGM, that PTSB was officially back in business and was able to open its doors to lending again.
This, he said, would see the business competing once again for mortgages, car loans, educational loans, and current account custom.
Overseeing the AGM — during which a number of shareholders walked out over the use of proxy votes to override their call for a show of hands on a motion to adjourn the meeting to a later date — Mr Cook said real progress had been made in mending the company. This he said, was despite another challenging year for the bank and the economy.
He said that the last year had seen the bank progress in “addressing our problems and taking decisive action to help the position of our customers and the position of the taxpayer, who has invested so heavily in our business and whose support has been critical to us over the past number of years”.
He said that the group’s main priorities now, are to restructure its business, which will be led by a viable competitive lending unit; to work closely with and help its customers in arrears, and to use capital efficiently in the management of its non-core asset portfolios.
Yesterday’s meeting — which also saw Piotr Skoczylas, a high-profile independent shareholder representative voted off the board of PTSB’s holding company — also heard from former employees upset over the pending closure of the bank’s defined benefit pension scheme.
While appreciative of their plight, Mr Cook said the cost of funding the scheme was too high and that management’s primary duty is to save the bank.
He said that the planned restructuring of the group will result in a bank better able to compete with the country’s larger banks.
