Anglo made buyout plea to rival bank

ANGLO Irish Bank chiefs made a desperate plea to Bank of Ireland to take it over on the same day the Government was holding crisis talks on the introduction of the blanket guarantee to protect the banking sector.

The date was September 29, 2008, when shares in all the major Irish banks were in free fall. Anglo had substantial repayments due the following day and was unable to meet them.

In a bid to stave off its collapse Anglo’s then chairman, Sean FitzPatrick and chief executive David Drumm, met Bank of Ireland’s then chairman, Richard Burrows and chief executive Brian Goggin and made a dramatic plea to the duo to buy Anglo. They refused and immediately alerted their counterparts in AIB to the fate awaiting Anglo. The top executives of both banks immediately sought a meeting with Government, then in the middle of the crisis talks about the introduction of the general bank guarantee. These revelations emerged in an RTÉ 1 programme called Freefall.