Richie Boucher to leave Bank of Ireland

Richie Boucher yesterday announced plans to step down from the top job at Bank of Ireland which he has held since the height of the banking crisis, indicating the lender was all but restored to full financial health. A search for his replacement has already begun.

His departure later this year will mark the last of Ireland’s boom-time bankers to exit lenders which needed to be expensively bailed out by taxpayers as the country hurtled into its worst financial crisis and the bailout of late 2010.

Holding senior positions since joining from Royal Bank of Scotland in 2003, Mr Boucher was appointed chief executive in early 2009. A few months earlier the Government had struck the banking guarantee that covered a huge range of the bank bond debt at the bailed-out lenders.