The Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform, Paschal Donohoe, has appointed Ann O'Brien and Raj Singh as non-executive directors to the board of AIB Group.
This follows a comprehensive and transparent open selection process run by the Public Appointments Service (PAS) and the Department of Finance.
The Department of Finance and the Public Appointment Service last year established a new process to identify appropriately skilled candidates for nomination by the Finance Minister to the three banks in which the State holds a shareholding - AIB, Bank of Ireland and Permanent TSB.
The preferred candidates are also required to obtain regulatory approval by successfully completing the ECB's Fitness and Probity assessment.
Announcing the appointments today, the Finance Minister said the Programme for Partnership Government had included a commitment to stop appointing new Public Interest Directors in the banks in which the State has a shareholding.
Minister Donohoe also said the programme wants to reform the process by which future Ministerial nominees are appointed to the board of each bank.
"Appointments are now being made on foot of the State's rights as shareholder in each of the banks and not using the powers contained in the Credit Institutions Financial Support (CIFS) Act as was the case with Public Interest Directors," he added.
Further announcements in relation to the nomination of non-executive directors in the Permanent TSB and Bank of Ireland will be made in the months ahead, Mr Donohoe said.
Ann O'Brien has over 30 years' experience in the financial services industry. A past student of UCD and Trinity College Dublin, for the past 20 years Ann has led complex management consulting engagements at many of the world's largest global banking and securities organisations.
Her most recent role was as a Principal with Deloitte in New York where she was based for 10 years.
Raj Singh has 34 years' business, risk and governance experience in large complex financial services organisations, which has included 17 years in international, commercial, private and consumer banking, followed by 17 years in financial conglomerate, reinsurance and insurance and asset management firms.
He has worked at Standard Life Aberdeen, Accedere, Swiss Reinsurance Company Allianz SE, and Citigroup.
Meanwhile, the bank has also appointed Cathy Bryce as Managing Director of Corporate, Institutional and Business Banking.
She will succeed Colin Hunt who was recently appointed as Group CEO.
Ms Bryce previously worked at the National Treasury Management Agency where she was Director of the National Development Finance Agency and NewERA.
Prior to that she was AIB’s Head of Syndicated & International Finance where she had over 20 years’ experience in various capital markets roles.
