SHAREHOLDERS LASH OUT

IT wasn’t his nest egg that Gary Keogh threw at the AIB boss but by the look on his hugely unimpressed face, he wouldn’t have been much more out of pocket if he had taken his life savings and tossed them across the room instead.

With his pension made up of AIB shares now valued at a handful of eggs, recently retired Keogh felt compelled to select two particularly yolky specimens and hurl them at bank chairman Dermot Gleeson.

Gleeson scrambled to duck the missiles, escaping with a light spattering of goo across his left shoulder, but even his quick recovery of composure couldn’t save this EGM from being remembered as one of the most extraordinary in the bank’s history.

An unrepentant Keogh was escorted from the premises by security, declaring he would live with the consequences of his actions – be they criminal prosecution, civil suit or suit-cleaning bill.

“If we didn’t live in a tolerant society, the chairman and the rest of the board would be hanging by their necks with piano wire,” the 66-year-old south Dubliner said.

The rest of the 600-strong crowd of shareholders who gathered at bank headquarters in Dublin’s leafy Ballsbridge almost unanimously echoed his sentiments.

Dozens of speakers rose from the floor during three hours of questioning to ask how management could have been so careless, incompetent or downright deceitful as to run up €4.3 billion in bad debts and allow shares to lose 95% of their value, all the while insisting the financial souffle was rising nicely and in no danger of collapse.

Gleeson sensed there was no point in trying to placate a sea of spitting shareholders and so attempted a display of remorse. “We were wrong,” he said of the view around the AIB top table that the plummeting economy would somehow have a soft landing.

“With hindsight I regret some of the lending decisions that were made, particularly in relation to property development,” he continued. “I apologise unreservedly to you for the anxiety and distress that shareholders have suffered.”

Had he wept a little, proffered the crowd a length of piano wire or at least pelted himself with a few eggs, his words might have yielded sympathy, but his performance left the audience cold.

Many were pensioners who had lost personal fortunes in the share wipe-out and were now fearful in the face of uncertain futures.

“There are elderly people in nursing homes who can not pay their bills,” one lady said. “We feel absolutely robbed and cheated,” said another.

Reckless, unscrupulous, arrogant, incompetent, ludicrous and disgusting were the most common adjectives in use by the speakers. The words squandered and obliterated, liar and thief, were also vigorously delivered.

Gleeson turned from remorseful to defiant, pointing out many other noble financial institutions around the world were also caught out by the economic meltdown but the crowd was not impressed.

His reply to queries about bank chief executive Eugene Sheehy’s €600,000 bonus at a time when share values were halving, that: “He invested all of the bonus in AIB shares, which clearly is its own penalty,” drew only a humourless laugh.

The shareholders went on to deal with the main business of the EGM, voting to accept the Government’s €3.5bn recapitalisation deal which makes the state a substantial stakeholder in the bank.

That means we all own a right to a bunch of AIB shares or the dividends they might someday yield. Time will tell whether a handful of eggs each might have been more appetising.