STATE-OWNED Anglo Irish Bank is to close its office in Chicago, one of three offices operated by the bank in the US, as part of the its plan to reduce costs.
The bank employs 11 staff in Chicago who will either be made redundant or transferred to Anglo’s main US office in Boston or to the bank’s New York office.
Anglo’s chief executive Mike Aynsley told staff in an e-mail circular sent on Monday evening that the bank would leave in place “a small transition team for a period of time to deal with any ongoing operational matters”.
He said that the bank intended to transfer all existing business in the Chicago office to Boston “as soon as is practically possible”.
Anglo employed 14 people in Chicago at the peak of its business.
The highest profile project financed by Anglo in the city was the proposed 150-storey Chicago Spire, which would be the tallest residential building in the world.
Property developer Garrett Kelleher planned to build the tower at a cost of $2.3 billion (€1.5 billion), though the project has encountered delays due to the financial crisis. Anglo had provided loans of $70 million to the project.
Some €10.3 billion, or 14 per cent of Anglo’s €72.3 billion loan book, is in the US. The US loan book has the lowest level of bad debts across the bank’s portfolios.
Some €1.4 billion of the US loans relate to land and development; the remainder are investment and business banking loans.
Most of the US loan book is expected to be excluded from Nama to facilitate a quick sale of the loans. Anglo is seeking 25 job cuts in the US and Europe as part of a plan to seek 230 redundancies across all its operations.
