Bid to allay fears over Fortis bailout

Postbank, the joint venture between An Post and financial giant Fortis, today insisted that banking services in post offices would be unaffected by a multi-million euro bailout of Fortis.

The governments of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have come to the rescue of Fortis, one of the biggest banking and insurance companies in the EU.

A spokesman for Postbank, which was established in 2007, said it was business as usual for its operations in hundreds of post offices nationwide.

“Postbank is independently managed and independently financed. The situation in Fortis has shown no negative effect on Postbank operations over the past 24 hours and we don’t expect any,” he said.

All customer deposits at Postbank are guaranteed.

Government officials from the three Benelux countries hammered out a €1.2bn plan to partially nationalise Fortis over the weekend after the it failed to dispel liquidity concerns.

A spokeswoman for An Post also said today: “Trading is very solid in Postbank at the moment.”

She added that the turmoil in financial markets in recent weeks had actually seen a surge of customers to Postbank services.

Postbank was established in 2007 to rival existing high street banks with a distinctive package of services.

The British Government has also announced today that it plans to nationalise the mortgages and loans of UK lender, Bradford & Bingley.