Options for the banks - Changes at the top are unavoidable

OVER the past two years the Bank of Ireland has presided over the single greatest destruction of wealth in the short history of this State.

At last year’s high point the 74,000 people who own up to 10,000 shares in the bank had shares worth €18. Yesterday morning those once-envied shares closed at just 83c.

This level of collapse, this decimation of small-investor capital must have an effect on the lives of those who imagined they were combining conservative opportunity and reasonable security in their investments.