Consultants brief BoI's Boucher on probity test

BANK OF Ireland has hired international consultants Promontory Financial Group to help chief executive Richie Boucher and other directors and executives at the bank prepare for the Central Bank’s fitness and probity tests.

The consultants, who are better known for their work for AIB after the John Rusnak rogue trading scandal at the bank’s Allfirst operations in the United States, have been working with executive and non-executive directors at Bank of Ireland as well as senior managers who will be subjected to the tests.

The Central Bank’s head of financial regulation Matthew Elderfield has said the tests will initially assess top management at the banks – the executive and non-executive directors – to investigate their track records in the run-up to the financial crisis.

Promontory will be working with senior executives such as Des Crowley, head of the bank’s Irish and UK retail operations, and Denis Donovan, head of capital markets, and the managers of Bank of Ireland’s major divisions, including the credit and risk units.

A spokeswoman for the Central Bank said it was assessing responses from 50 executive and non-executive directors at the Government-guaranteed institutions to assess whether further investigation was required into their pre-crisis roles at the banks.

The Central Bank wrote to the directors at all State-guaranteed banks last June, asking them to confirm whether they intended to remain in their jobs beyond January and warning them of new powers coming into effect next year to remove bankers who contributed to the financial difficulties experienced by their institutions in the crisis.

It is not yet clear how many executives at Bank of Ireland below board and senior executive levels may be tested by the Central Bank. Promontory’s work for the bank is initially focusing on the top bankers at the institution.

Mr Boucher is the only remaining pre-crisis executive director at Bank of Ireland who intends to stay on beyond the start of next year. He joined the board in 2006. The other remaining executive director, finance director John O’Donovan, will retire later this year.

A private investment of €1.1 billion in Bank of Ireland last month by a group of North American investors led by Canadian financial firm Fairfax was a strong endorsement of Mr Boucher as the investors backed his plans for the bank.

The investment reduced the State’s shareholding to 15 per cent, keeping the bank out of the Government control – the only Irish bank to remain outside State hands. The deal, in which the investors publicly supported Mr Boucher, weakened the Government’s plans to remove pre-crisis executives.

The Central Bank fitness and probity tests remain the last imminent threat to Mr Boucher, who was involved in growing the bank’s property development business during the boom years, remaining on as chief executive.