Excellent point Bandage. Can I recommend the following as an alternative? It costs a reasonable and recession-friendly €13.90
A frenzy in Firenze, sounds good
I am actually going into BOI on Friday morning to withdraw all my money.
art foley is currently setting up an account with Barclays for me…What will you do with your v funds
I asked the girl in BOI today was my life savings of €1,000 safe and she burst out laughing, so I asked her again, in a more serious tone, and she assured my that it was perfectly safe. I think I’ll withdraw it tomorrow and take it home and hide it. I don’t trust these easy going folk who think they’re sitting on a perfectly safe permanent job. :unsure:
you will be needing the trailer so
Who will buy Ireland’s banks?
After playing a central role in bringing the country to its knees, Ireland’s banks are up for sale. The central bank boss Patrick Honohan this week took the unusual step of urging bidders to step forward to take them off the authorities’ hands. “They [the banks] are for sale as far as I am concerned. I have been an advocate for a number of years for small countries to have foreign owners for their banks,” Honohan said.
The aid package for Ireland is thought to include up to €40bn (£33.9bn) to rejuvenate the banking sector and carve off the most troubled loans. Cleaned up banks might be attractive to bidders accustomed to dealing with basket-case institutions. For an idea of the price, Bank of Ireland’s current market value is less than €2.5bn – and falling sharply. So who might be interested?
Wilbur Ross
A billionaire investor who made his reputation sorting out the mess left by Wall Street’s junk bond king Michael Milken has already admitted to having an appetite for picking over the carcasses of Ireland’s crippled sector. Ross, a septuagenarian American, revealed that his WL Ross & Co vehicle had already been selected as one of two final bidders for Ireland’s EBS building society. His appetite may stop there given that he said that his interest in EBS was “probably the strongest demonstration of our belief that Ireland will turn around and will come back out of this perhaps not as the same Celtic Tiger that it had been but as a good strong country”. He might also be a conduit in Ireland for Virgin Money, the ambitious banking arm of Sir Richard Branson’s empire in which Ross took at 21% stake earlier this year.
Christopher Flowers
Another American investor who enjoys sniffing over troubled business is Harvard-educated Flowers. The former Goldman Sachs banker’s eponymous JC Flowers was interested in Northern Rock, one of the first high street banks to run into difficulties in the early stages of the financial crisis. Last week he achieved his goal of getting into the retail banking scene by taking a stake in the Kent Reliance building society in an attempt to create a new way of owning mutuals. The embattled Irish banks seem an obvious next step for this canny banker.
Santander
Despite concerns that the pack of cards collapsing through the eurozone could soon end up in Spain, the country’s biggest bank Santander may find the thought of a cheap branch network in Ireland irresistible. The bank has already won a reputation this side of the Irish Sea as a haven for troubled institutions. It bought the hapless Abbey National in 2005 after it had been cleaned up by a management team that include the current Royal Bank of Scotland boss Stephen Hester and then stepped in to help out Alliance & Leicester just before the banking crisis got into full swing in 2008. When Bradford & Bingley was on the rocks in the fortnight after Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008, it was Santander that picked up the former building society’s branches and depositors at a rock-bottom price.
Santander’s UK chief executive António Horta-Osório has become such a trusted part of the British banking scene that he is to take over at the helm of state-controlled Lloyds Banking Group. Perhaps there is an outside chance that his successor might yet get a chance at Ireland.
RBS
The part-nationalised bank only exists thanks to £54bn of support from UK taxpayers, who currently have a 84% stake in the Edinburgh-based bank. While its £50bn of exposure to Ireland is currently a cause for concern for investors who have driven its shares down towards 40p, some City analysts reckon there is some logic in a bid for one of the embattled Irish banks. Aside from the fact that chief executive Stephen Hester has a solid reputation for turning round troubled banks, RBS also owns Ulster Bank, a familiar name on both sides of the Irish border. There is some evidence that Ulster has already begun to benefit from the outflows hitting Irish owned banks so putting it with one of the troubled high street players could have some merit.
I believe all BOI staff were told this evening that they would be attending a conference call at 9:15 tomorrow morning.
Lot of rumours flying about as to it’s purpose.
Perhaps somebody on this forum could enlighten us?
I would have to guess that’s not true, well I doubt it’s universal anyway. That wouldn’t be the type of thing you’d be able to keep very secret among all BOI staff.
For clarification purposes - I do not work for BOI.
The staff member from where I got my information said they were told it was going to be to thank them for their hard work and commitment :lol:
They are some what more skeptical.
Staff will be informed that the Christmas party this year will have James Bond as its theme.
0.07 cents a share seems a bit high to me.
pussy galore?
You’re mixing up PWC with BOI.
There would have been a run on the banks this morning only that it was a bit too cold to be hanging around on the streets.
AIB used forged document to claim couple’s home
By Conor Keane, Business Editor
Monday, January 17, 2011
ALLIED Irish Banks is conducting an internal investigation into how it used forged documents to claim it held a security over property owned by a couple who borrowed €120,000 from the bank.
The couple, who live in Munster and have asked not to be identified, have warned all borrowers to keep full copies of loan agreements and check that the bank has not falsely claimed to have a claim on their properties to secure outstanding loans.
The pair originally sign- ed a loan agreement on September 8, 2008, for a €120,000 bridging loan to finish an investment property they were building.
However, the couple were unable to sell the completed house in the depressed property market and ran into repayment difficulties.
A new “altered” loan agreement dated September 23, 2008, was produced by the bank giving AIB security over their investment property and their family home.
This document had the couple’s signatures and altered dates and conditions.
"We were extremely distressed to be sent a contract — 13 months after the original agreement — that we’d neither seen, signed or agreed to, that documented our family home and our investment property was put down as security.
"We could not believe that one of the largest banking institutions could blatantly alter documents and use our signatures from our original contract and transfer these to a revised contract without our knowledge.
“Had we not kept our own original documentation, the bank appeared to have security against our family home without our permission,” the couple said.
On January 10, 2010, the bank wrote to the couple stating: “We do not have an explanation for the credit agreement dated 23rd September 2008, and it was not accepted by Mr & Mrs ——, we have not been relying on same and it has been removed from the file. We trust this is to your satisfaction.”
The couple have failed over the last 12 months to get an adequate response from AIB as to how it came to use forged documents.
"We have been under exceptional stress and uncertainty, unable to obtain any answers other than if we are unhappy with the bank’s response, ie fraudulent behaviour; that we can complain to the Financial Services Ombudsman (FSO).
“The bank has been completely impersonal and indifferent to our feelings…”
AIB told the Irish Examiner the matter is under investigation.
The FSO cannot name financial institutions found guilty of wrongdoing and the couple feared AIB was pushing them in this direction to cover up the issue.
This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, January 17, 2011
Can these 'tards be filletted soon please. :rolleyes:
BoI admits it paid millions in bonuses since bank guarantee
By Ailish O’Hora
Monday January 17 2011
MILLIONS of euro in bonuses have been paid to Bank of Ireland staff since the introduction of the bank guarantee.
The Government yesterday confirmed that it has launched an investigation into the payments after bank officials admitted supplying incorrect and misleading information on staff bonuses to the Dail.
Senior officials at the Department of Finance will also probe a six-figure bonus paid to an executive at Bank of Ireland’s asset management division.
Banks bailed out by the taxpayer have paid bonuses totalling €45m since being guaranteed by the State, including €20m to staff at the failed Anglo Irish Bank.
When Finance Minister Brian Lenihan outlined bonus figures in December, the sum recorded for Bank of Ireland was nil. But it has now emerged that bonuses were paid.
While the payment amount is not yet known, it will be established as part of the Department of Finance enquiry and will run into millions.
Under the terms of the Subscription Agreement that Bank of Ireland signed on receiving taxpayers’ money in March 2009, it also had to disclose payments of bonuses connected to work done between 2006 and 2008 to the minister.
The Department of Finance and the Attorney General’s office is also investigating whether the payment to the executive at the asset management division falls under the terms of that agreement.
The misinformation from the bank on bonuses emerged through a Dail question tabled by Labour finance spokeswoman Joan Burton last week.
A spokesperson for the bank said yesterday there was no intention to mislead.
Still no sign of the rationalisation of these redundant banks, looks like there’ll be years more of these wasters playing tic tac toe daily at our expense. Anything more than statutory redundancy for these villians will be a disgraceful waste of tax payers money.
“I was only following orders” That’s what the guards said at Dachau. Cunts.