BANK OF IRELAND SHAREHOLDERS TO VOTE ON NAMA TODAY - Bank of Ireland holds an extraordinary general meeting of its shareholders later this morning to approve its plans to work with the National Asset Management Agency. The participating banks will start transferring loans to NAMA next month, when development loans valued at €19 billion, from the ten biggest borrowers, will be transferred in the first stage. Around half of the approximately €80 billion in loans to be acquired by NAMA will be transferred by the end of April.
Kevin McConnell, from Bloxham Stockbrokers, says AIB, Irish Nationwide and EBS have all cleared their participation in the NAMA process. He says that when AIB shareholders indicated their approval just before Christmas, the bank also issued a statement showing how it planned to move forward. He says he is expecting something similar from Bank of Ireland today.
Mr McConnell says that Bank of Ireland is seen as being in the best position of all the Irish guaranteed banks since the launch of the NAMA scheme. He says this is down to the fact that its exposure to development loans relative to its total loan book was not as significant as other banks. He says BoI has about €15.5 billion in assets to move across to NAMA, but in terms of proportionality the bank would be seen as having a better quality than some of the other banks in the sector.
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MORNING BRIEFS - Tesco has just reported its strongest Christmas sales performance in three years. The supermarket said uk like-for-like sales in the six weeks to January 9 grew by 4.9%.
*** Revenue says around 1,500 mortgage holders may not have got their most recent payment for mortgage interest tax relief, due to an error in the information it provided to mortgage lenders about these customers. The tax body says it is was working with each financial institution to rectify the issue, and that this will be done before the February payment. It administers tax relief at source on mortgage interest for around 343,000 mortgage accounts.
*** Proposals from an independent arbitrator recommend that Aer Lingus pilots should get a 10% pay cut and that 50 'top scale' pilots should be made redundant. Among the other recommendations, pilots would pay more towards their pensions and other benefits would be cut. The package aims to save the airline €30m, part of a €97m restructuring plan.
*** As Europe's central bankers believe a 'progressive normalisation' of the world economy has taken hold, driven by emerging economies, the British Chambers of Commerce says there have been improvements in many areas of the British economy, most strikingly in manufacturing. Its economic survey for last three months of 2009 says it appears to be 'on the brink of leaving recession'. But it warns that, despite exports in the service sector strengthening, the industry was still struggling.
*** On the currency markets the euro is trading at $1.4493 cents and 90.07 pence sterling.
