AIB share sale plan extended into 2023

The Government has extended the time frame in which it plans to offload part of its large shareholding in AIB, Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe has announced.

Originally set to run until July 10th, the share trading plan, which is being conducted on behalf of the State by US bank Merril Lynch International, will now run until at least January 24th, 2023, “unless further extended by the minister”, the Department of Finance said in a statement on Friday.

A similar strategy was used to sell down the Government’s then-13.9 per cent stake in Bank of Ireland, announced in June 2021. That share trading plan was renewed in November 2021 and again in April this year, with the State’s shareholding in the bank falling to below 3 per cent in recent weeks.

So far, the State has drip-fed AIB shares to the market, generating €161 million in the process and gradually reducing its majority stake in the pillar lender, - built up after rescuing AIB in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Since the commencement of the sale process, the State’s shareholding in AIB has fallen from 71 per cent to 68 per cent.

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Announcing the extension on Friday, Mr Donohoe said: “When I announced the launch of the share trading plan last December, I said that the State’s exit from its investment in AIB would be a multiyear journey, so it is important, and I believe it is in the taxpayers’ best interest, to extend the share trading plan for a further period.

“I will continue to keep other monetisation options open, should these opportunities present themselves.”

Separately yesterday, the Central Bank of Ireland hit AIB and its EBS unit with a record €96.7 million file for their role in the tracker mortgage scandal, which resulted in thousands of the group’s customers being overcharged and the loss of 137 properties by borrowers who ran into financial trouble.

The group fine is 2½ times the regulator’s previous highest financial sanction, imposed on Ulster Bank in March last year for its involvement in the same practice — Irish banking’s biggest overcharging affair.