ANALYSIS:ASKING RICHIE Boucher, chief executive of Bank of Ireland, for his views on comments from the Dalai Lama is not something you would ordinarily expect on results day at Ireland's largest bank.
But nothing should really cause surprise anymore in the topsy- turvy world of Irish banking.
His holiness (the Dalai Lama) said on his visit to Ireland this week that bankers should be forgiven for the crisis but should not forget what they have done.
Boucher says he has not read his comments.
“Whatever about the forgiveness piece, we shouldn’t forget what we have been through,” finance director John O’Donovan says in reply. “There needs to be lessons learned here.”
Boucher (52) has been on the board of Bank of Ireland (the bank calls it the court) since 2006. He has been chief executive since February 2009, five months after the crisis erupted. More crucially, he played a key role in lending more to developers, which has caused the most carnage, after joining from Ulster Bank’s parent Royal Bank of Scotland in 2003, the year that marked the start of the property bubble.
Boucher’s attention, however, has been on repairing the bank rather than reflecting on the past.
He declined to comment on the Central Bank’s upcoming fitness and probity checks, which will take a closer look at bankers who may have contributed to the crisis and the banks that received State aid.
“I have a job to do and I will do that job to the best of my ability,” he says when asked would he resign if the bank failed to raise the required €5.2 billion in capital and fell into Government control.
Boucher says the bank has “faced up to our problems two years ago” and taken all the “hits” from loan sales to the National Asset Management Agency “without the catastrophic impact that it has had on other banks”.
The bank is 36 per cent owned by the Government and Boucher says it is not a foregone conclusion that the bank would slip into majority State control.
The Government has given Bank of Ireland time to raise private cash. Boucher says it will need to raise this by early summer and will set out a plan within weeks. The bank had originally aimed to unveil a full strategy at yesterday’s results but it was too soon after last month’s stress tests.
The bank’s financial performance may have improved on 2009 but the results are still dismal.
Regardless, Boucher says he sees Bank of Ireland as the lead bank in Ireland, the first of the Government’s “two pillars”.
He still sees himself as the man to rebuild it.
Bank of Ireland 2010 results
Total income: €2.8bn (-16%)
Profit before bad debts:€1bn (-29%)
Bad loan charge: €1.9bn (-34%)
Loss on Nama loans: €2.2bn (-)
Underlying loss before tax:€3.5bn (+5%)
Loss before tax: €950m (-57%)
