IRISH NATIONWIDE has appointed banker Roger McGreal as a non-executive director at the building society. Mr McGreal is a former associate director of corporate lending at the Investment Bank of Ireland (IBI) and executive director of Woodchester Investments.
More recently Mr McGreal has held a number of non-executive director positions at private companies and special purpose finance companies established in the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in Dublin.
He is the fourth former IBI executive to take up a senior position at the building society this year, following the appointment of Danny Kitchen as chairman, Gerry McGinn as chief executive and Valerie Mulhall as a liaison officer with the National Asset Management Agency (Nama).
Mr Kitchen was chairman in the final period of the tenure of former managing director Michael Fingleton at the society and was acting chief executive following his departure.
The building society said that Mr McGreal is "an experienced banker with responsibilities for banking, credit and risk" and it welcomed the experience and skill which he will bring to the board.
Mr McGreal joins Mr Kitchen and two Government-appointed directors, former Deloitte accountant Rory O'Ferrall and Adrian Kearns, the former chief executive of the National Development Finance Agency, on the board of Irish Nationwide.
The building society's other directors are Stan Purcell, former assistant Dublin city manager Seán Carey and Terry Cooney.
One of the tasks faced by Mr McGreal and the rest of the board will be the restructuring of the building society once Nama acquires €8 billion of the building society's €10.5 billion loan book.
The sale of 76 per cent of Irish Nationwide's loans to the toxic asset agency will leave the society with a rump of €2.5 billion in loans, primarily residential mortgages in Ireland.
The loan transfers to Nama is expected to be a catalyst leading to the building society's merger with rival EBS in the first step in the creation of a third force in Irish banking to rival Allied Irish Banks (AIB) and Bank of Ireland.
Irish Nationwide is expected to incur significant losses from the Nama's purchase of the loans which, it is estimated, will leave the society requiring about €1 billion in capital from the Government to replenish its reserves.
The legislation putting Nama in place is currently being debated in the Oireachtas.
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