THE SECOND most senior executive on the new management team installed by the Government at the troubled State-owned Anglo Irish Bank is to leave the lender after just over a year in the role.
Dutch banker Maarten Van Eden gave notice of his intention to leave the bank at an agreed date between April 30th and June 30th, Anglo said in a statement.
Mr Van Eden, the bank's chief financial officer, is understood to have grown unhappy with the day-to-day interaction and process of dealing with the State authorities during his time at the bank.
He had no comment to make beyond the bank’s statement.
The Department of Finance and the National Treasury Management Agency, which manages the Government banking interests, also had no comment to make.
“The board and senior management are very grateful to Maarten for this huge commitment and extensive work since he joined the bank in January 2010,” Anglo said.
“The board will now identify and appoint a successor to Maarten and announce this in due course.”
Mr Van Eden will finalise the publication of Anglo’s 2010 audited financial results next month before leaving the bank.
The banker, who previously worked at Dutch bank ING, oversaw with chief executive Mike Aynsley two restructuring plans submitted by the bank in which they proposed the creation of good and bad banks out of Anglo.
The plans were rejected by the Government after concerns were expressed by the EU Commission.
The Government instead chose a separate plan for Anglo – devised with direction from the Central Bank and the NTMA – to create an asset recovery bank and funding bank to retain its deposits.
That proposal was shelved last autumn after the continued run on deposits at the bank. A merger and gradual wind-down of Anglo and Irish Nationwide was a condition of the Government’s agreement with the EU and the IMF for the €85 billion bailout package.
The announcement of Mr Van Eden’s departure comes days after the Government secured court approval to sell Anglo’s €10 billion deposit book and commence the merger with Irish Nationwide and the gradual wind-down of the enlarged bank over several years.
The Government told the court this week that the gradual loss of deposits at Anglo was continuing to destabilise the banking system and that the restructuring was necessary to prevent further losses.
Anglo issued unaudited results on Tuesday showing that it expected a loss of €17.6 billion for 2010, beating its own record for the worst losses by an Irish company when it lost €12.7 billion for the 15 months to the end of 2009.
The bank has received €29.3 billion from the State to cover losses primarily on the transfer of €34 billion in property loans at a discount of 62 per cent to the State’s loans agency Nama.
