THE FORMER AIB chairman Dermot Gleeson SC is believed to be returning to practising more regularly at the Irish bar.
Mr Gleeson has applied for readmission to the Law Library, the facility used by most practising barristers. His application was accepted, a spokesman for the library said. No comment was available from Mr Gleeson.
The barrister joined the board of AIB in 2000 and served as non-executive chairman from October 2003 to July 2009, a period during which the bank’s total assets more than doubled.
He continued working as a barrister during some of his time as chairman but in more recent times let his position with the Law Library lapse.
Mr Gleeson has been involved in arbitration work, most notably as a result of his appointment in 2003 by the European Commission as an ombudsman overseeing relations between De Beers and the 100 largest diamond merchants in the world.
The share price of AIB has collapsed from a high of around €22 at the beginning of 2007 to a closing price of €0.34 yesterday.
The then chairman increased his shareholding in the bank to 350,000 shares at the end of 2008, from the 100,000 he held at the outset of that year, according to the bank’s 2008 annual account.
He invested in Dublin property at the height of the boom. He was a member of a partnership that bought Brooklawn House, an office building in Ballsbridge, for €47 million in April 2006.
He was also in a partnership that bought property at the corner of Dawson Street and Duke Street, Dublin, in December 2006 for €20 million.
He is a former attorney general, a position he held between 1994 and 1997.