Rise and fall is a typical story of Celtic Tiger excess
It financed Sean Dunne’s high-rise dream in Ballsbridge.
It provided money for Liam Carroll’s developments around the Gasworks in Dublin 4.
In 2010, it was forced to take joint control of Arnotts after a failed bid to revamp Dublin’s Henry Street area. Between 2008 and 2010 it incurred £4.4bn (€5.26bn) worth of property related losses in Ireland.
Almost a third of its loan book was moved into a micro NAMA-style division for winding up the arrangements.
In 2010, 1.37% of its residential mortgages were impaired and 14% of its corporate and development loans were in trouble.
A typically Celtic Tiger story, Ulster Bank grew from having £27bn worth of assets on its books at the end of 2004 but just three years later, this had grown to £55bn.
But this was unsustainable. Operating losses at the Ulster Bank group stood at £3.2bn in 2010, up from £1.3bn in 2009.
* The bank guarantee: The panic caused by the dramatic bank guarantee in September 2008 and the rush for safe havens in the immediate aftermath hit Ulster Bank hard.
In the four days after the Government decision to guarantee €440bn worth of deposits in Irish institutions, Ulster Bank, which was not covered, lost £732 million worth of deposits. This exacerbated a semi-run on its parent bank, RBS, and three days later the British government had to intervene to shore up its cash position.
* Fight for new customers: The bank had been engaged in an aggressive bid to attract new customers since the mid-1990s.
This reached new levels in the last decade with cash payments for new deposit accounts, free banking and extended opening hours to suit different clients. It was the first bank to carry the cost of mortgage customers switching their lender.
In 2003, it brought in 36,000 new customers and was accounting for 20% of the mortgage market. More than 50,000 clients signed up the following year.
The bank was in a direct battle with Permanent TSB for third place behind AIB and Bank of Ireland, after losing the fight to buy the TSB in the late 1990s.
This struggle meant that many of its loans and mortgages switching from other lenders happened at the height of the property boom.
* Growth of branch network: Ulster Bank’s southern strategy has been obsessive in its ambition to elbow market share.
In the last 20 years, the bank has opened 56 new branches in the Republic.
Staff numbers increased from 4,000 in 2000, to almost 7,000 seven years later, while wage bills trebled to more than £300m a year in the 32 counties.
Its enlargement activity spiked in two periods, the mid-1990s and the late-2000s.
In 1994 and 1995, 21 new outlets were opened. And after 2006, when it launched a €73m expansion plan, it added 23 new branches to its portfolio.
The bank has said it has no immediate plans to close offices or cut back on business offered through its banks.
However, it said this network is kept under constant review.
