BANK OF Ireland’s new chief executive Richie Boucher said that the Government’s €3.5 billion capital injection should be “sufficient” to withstand future loan losses but further measures were needed to avoid the bank’s nationalisation.
Mr Boucher and the bank’s governor Richard Burrows have said that a scheme to address bad loans and an extension of the guarantee were the other measures required.
Mr Burrows, Mr Boucher and the court (board) of 17 directors faced angry and frustrated shareholders at the extraordinary general court (meeting) in the Savoy cinema in Dublin city centre.
The governor and chief executive apologised to shareholders, who have seen 94 per cent of the valuation of their shares wiped out in 12 months, for the losses and “devastation” they have suffered.
Shareholders voted to approve the State recapitalisation at the end of the acrimonious meeting, which lasted just over four hours.
The bank’s directors resisted calls to resign, saying they would step down and stand for re-election at the annual meeting in July.
Mr Burrows said that solutions needed for the banking sector still had to be “finalised, agreed with Government and introduced”.
“The capitalisation on its own is not being put forward as being the complete answer. It is answer which needs those other elements to it in order for the bank to survive as an independent financial services company,” he said.
Mr Boucher said he knew the risks on the banks’ books, particularly with regard to its €13 billion of loans to the collapsing property and construction markets in Ireland and the UK, and that it would take time to address those loans.
“The time period to recover will be long – it could be indefinite. It will take a huge amount of work to get those out. I cannot predict the absolute loan losses,” he said.
Mr Boucher was responsible for the Irish development loan growth as head of the bank’s Irish operations before being appointed chief executive of the bank last month.
A representative of shareholder Dermot Desmond and his Dublin investment firm IIU said that it appreciated the bank’s difficulty in finding a suitable candidate to be chief executive but “the time should have been spent to do so.”
Speaking for Mr Desmond, IIU finance director John Bateson called for management and board changes at the bank.
“It is difficult to understand the justification for allowing those who have caused the bank to be in this current mess to remain in situ and be trusted with getting it out of this mess,” he said.
Mr Bateson later added: “We are not advocating a swift, blanket ousting of the current board and management but a changing of the guard over an acceptable timeframe on the clear understanding that it will ultimately be a full, clean break with the past.”
The bank’s former chief executive Mike Soden said: “Those who have overseen the massive dilution in the value of our holdings are not the people to be entrusted with the responsibility of getting some or all of our losses back.”
Mr Soden said there is a global finance crisis, but the crisis experienced by Bank of Ireland has been “self-inflicted and not imported”.
Mr Bateson said the timing of the meeting was “ill-conceived” and “premature” as stockholders were being asked to consider “an incomplete solution”.
“The market and everyone here knows that irrespective of what we decide today further restructuring will be required,” he said.
Mr Boucher said the bank would assess Government proposals for an asset protection scheme, essentially a toxic company to assume the bad loans, over the next six weeks. He said the bank would hope “to have some influence” on Government on this.
He said that each bank’s property loans were different and that he hoped the scheme would not be “a one-size-fits-all approach”.
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