Allied Irish Bank's new chief executive Michael Buckley could no doubt have done without his first set of results being tarnished by a dismal performance at the bank's Polish operations, from whence he succeeded to his current position.

Still, Mr Buckley wasn't going to let a little temporary setback steal the wind from his sails, trumpeting plans to expand the bank's newly-merged operations in Poland into the third largest network in one of Eastern Europe's more developed economies.

And there was never any danger of the Polish glitch upsetting the party at Bankcentre, where the company celebrated the strong performance of its Irish operations and the evidence of growing momentum in the recovery at US operations, and stuck to its medium-term forecast of double-digit growth.