BoI has 'cleaned up' balance sheet

Telecoms and media billionaire Denis O'Brien has said he would invest in Bank of Ireland, as it has now "cleaned up its balance sheet".

"Bank of Ireland has taken the medicine," said Mr O'Brien in an interview with Bloomberg Television today at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

While Irish banks have written down their assets to market values and been recapitalised, "other banks around Europe haven't done a mark-to-market", he said.

Ireland has injected €4.7 billion into Bank of Ireland since March 2009 to cover loan losses and taken a share in the bank in return. The State has since cut its stake in Bank of Ireland to 15.1 per cent by selling a 34.9 per cent holding last year to five investors, including Toronto-based Fairfax Financial Holdings and WL Ross and Co, the New York-based investment firm. BoI is the only domestic bank outside State control.

About €62 billion has gone into the country's largest six lenders, and the banks have sold much of their larger troubled property loans to the National Asset Management Agency.

"We have taken the cod liver oil," Mr said O'Brien, ranked as Ireland's wealthiest man in the 2011 Sunday Times  Rich List. "Ireland is definitely on the turn."

Bloomberg