Banking crash still costing us despite divestments

The State’s divestment of its shareholdings in domestic lenders continued yesterday with NatWest taking a stake in Permanent TSB as part of Ulster Bank’s exit from the market, and the Department of Finance announcing plans to sell another tranche of shares in AIB to reduce taxpayers’ holding to about 57 per cent.

At the beginning of this year, the State held 71 per cent of AIB, roughly 75 per cent of PTSB and a significant stake in Bank of Ireland.

The Bank of Ireland shares were sold earlier this year along with a sizeable tranche of AIB stock, reducing our stake to 62 per cent. This latest divestment plan will reduce that holding further and opens up the prospect that at some point next year – some 15 years after the banking crash – the State’s share of AIB could fall below 50 per cent. That would be a significant psychological milestone for the bank.

And with Sinn Féin riding high in the polls and potentially set to be part of the next government, AIB’s chief executive Colin Hunt might be glad that this divestment is continuing apace.

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In the case of Bank of Ireland, selling our remaining shares was made easier by the fact that the lender had repaid €6.7 billion to the exchequer versus the €4.7 billion in bailout aid that it received post the crash. Taxpayers never held a majority stake in the bank.

In the cases of AIB and PTSB, taxpayers remain significantly under water on both investments. Following this latest placing, AIB will have returned about €11.5 billion of cash to the State since its €20.7 billion crisis-era bailout. Taxpayers’ remaining shares will be worth about €4.75 billion. So the State remains about €4.45 billion under water, without factoring in inflation. The net cost of the PTSB bailout was €1.5 billion at the end of last year.

It is worth remembering that the cost of bailing out the entire banking sector (€64 billion) post 2008 rises by about €700 million a year due to debt-servicing costs, according to the Comptroller and Auditor General. Almost 15 years on, the banking crash is still costing us money. A sobering statistic.