BANK OF IRELAND CONFIRMS TALKS WITH POTENTIAL INVESTORS AS CEO DOES PENSION U-TURN - Bank of Ireland has said it is in talks with potential institutional investors to assess interest in raising capital. Oliver Gilvarry, an analyst with Dolmen Stockbrokers, says the statement from Bank of Ireland this morning is positive. However, he says that there is really nothing new in the details of the statement from the bank.
Meanwhile, the bank's chief executive Richie Boucher has waived his option to retire at the age of 55, meaning the bank does not have to top up his pension fund by €1.49m to fund his retirement. The bank says its priority to is restore the strength of the business and support economic recovery. But we have a way to go yet in terms of recovery. The International Monetary Fund said yesterday that Ireland has had the biggest crash of any developed European country, and that the economy will shrink by 1.5% this year.
Chris Horn, the founder of Iona Technologies and president of Engineers Ireland, is not mincing his words either. Addressing the engineers' annual conference today, he will say that Irish society itself is reeling from 'ridiculous arrogance', and 'breath-taking incompetence'.
Mr Horn says that in the past the country has just been overly confident. In some cases, a lack of experience was also evident. He says many times an appalling vista was seen ahead and people were not prepared to plan for that and to overcome it. He says in order to fix the economy, people must think the way an engineer thinks - to plan several moves ahead, work out what can go wrong and what the consequences will be if things do go wrong.
On the news of Richie Boucher's decision on his pension, he says he suspects that when the pension contract was put in place, the consequences were fairly predictable, especially in terms of likely public reaction. He says that one has to ask were people thinking several moves ahead as to what could go wrong and was the contract thought through in terms of its impact.
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MORNING BRIEFS - The Irish Times property section says that one of the K Club's owners is selling his share. Gerry Gannon owns 49% of the K Club, Michael Smurfit's dream exclusive golf retreat outside Straffan. Mr Smurfit owns the other 51%. Gerry Gannon is one of the top ten developers in NAMA, and when asked why he was selling his share, he said he could not expect the taxpayer to fund an exclusive, loss-making club in Co Kildare. It is expected that the potential €60m sale would attract interest from the Middle East and China.
*** On the currency markets the euro is trading at $1.34 and 86.7 pence sterling.
