LIAM BYRNE,
Sir, - The AIB affair highlights an issue that has often concerned me.
I have only a small acquaintance with the banking business but those banks I do know appear to make most or all of their profits nowadays from so-called "dealing" or "trading", known in plain English as gambling.
How has it happened that institutions which should be the pillars of the financial system are so dependent on these activities and what does it say about the future stability of the financial sector in times of stock market volatility and continued exchange rate uncertainty? - Yours, etc.,
M. FITZGIBBON, Merrion Court, Dublin 4.
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Sir, - The news that AIB's American subsidiary All First has lost $750 million as a result of fraud shows up the grave lack of control at Dublin headquarters of the bank's US offshoot. This has all the hallmarks of the Barings/Nick Leeson affair in the UK.
Those of us with longer memories will recall the Insurance Corporation of Ireland débâcle,when the Government had to bail out AIB, which owned the insurance company. As a result,everyone who pays insurance is levied 2 per cent to this very day to make up for AIB's carelessness at that time.
One would have thought that after the Barings collapse, it could not happen again, but it has. A sense of déjà vu, or what? - Yours, etc.,
LIAM BYRNE, St Brigid's Villas, Navan, Co Meath.