THE NEW management team at Anglo Irish Bank is planning to move to the bank’s less high-profile offices on Burlington Road in Dublin 4 from their offices on St Stephen’s Green, relocating the bank’s head office.
The aim of the transfer is to reduce costs and break the association with the bank’s existing headquarters – a scene of regular protests – and Anglo’s discredited former management led by Seán FitzPatrick and David Drumm.
Anglo’s new management team will move to Connaught House on Burlington Road, where the bank’s private banking operation is based.
The building is leased from Treasury Holdings, the development company owned by Johnny Ronan and Richard Barrett.
The bank is taking advantage of a break in the lease on another building it occupies on Baggot Street in Dublin later this year to relocate staff as part of the wider cost-cutting drive at the bank.
Anglo will move out of Baggot Street but continue to occupy the main office on St Stephen’s Green.
The bank will also keep Heritage House, a Georgian building two doors from the St Stephen’s Green office, to accommodate the internal team administering the loans moving to the National Asset Management Agency (Nama).
Heritage House had been used by Mr Drumm and Mr FitzPatrick to entertain guests and customers of the bank and for results presentations to media and analysts.
Any further relocation will depend on EU approval of Anglo’s plan to restructure itself into a good bank and bad bank after the Nama loan transfers.
Anglo holds a long lease on Connaught House with no break clause in the rental contract, which has prompted the bank to relocate its head office to the building to reduce overall costs.
The bank’s overall rental bill is forecast to fall to €13.3 million this year from €17.7 million in 2009.
Last February the bank terminated an agreement to lease a new head office in a building at North Wall Quay in the Dublin docklands that was being developed by Liam Carroll before the property crash.
This reduced Anglo’s future rent by €101 million, according to the bank’s 2009 report.
The bank still faces at least €201 million in future rental payments under existing leases it cannot cancel.
The relocation of Anglo’s senior management to Connaught House will make Treasury the landlord of the head offices of two banks and Nama.
The firm owns Bank of Ireland’s newly designated head office on Mespil Road and the Treasury Building on Grand Canal Street where Nama is based.
