AIB's boss says the bank is 'within touching distance' of repaying all its bailout money
The government has pulled the trigger on the bank’s €3 billion re-float.
THE HEAD OF AIB says that the bank is “now within touching distance” of being able to repay all of the €20.8 billion in bailout funds pumped into the lender.
The comments from the bank’s chief executive, Bernard Byrne, came after the government last night pulled the trigger on AIB’s long-awaited return to the public markets.
Finance Minister Michael Noonan announced that he – as expected – planned to float around 25% of the bank’s shares, beginning the sell-down of the state’s near-99.9% stake.
It is expected the IPO, which will take place on both the Dublin and London stock exchanges, will raise around €3 billion, however a detailed prospectus including a price range for the shares isn’t expected to be published until mid-June.
In an interview on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland today, Byrne said the bank was “very close” to being in a position to return taxpayers’ money used to shore up the lender.
Around €6.6 billion of the bank’s bailout funds have already been recouped through dividends and other payments, while the share sale could value AIB’s total equity at €12 billion.
Noonan said in late 2015 that the full re-privatisation of AIB could take more than a decade to maximise the return for taxpayers, however that schedule will likely be brought forward if the Irish economy remains buoyant.
AIB chief executive Bernard Byrne
Byrne separately told Newstalk that he had “met an awful lot of investors since the beginning of the year” and the “appetite is good” for the bank’s shares.
“They like the Irish economy and they can see the positive trends in the underlying economy,” he said.
“When you take the strong bank and the strong economy … it’s a positive situation.”
The government ignored a push from opposition parties earlier this month to stall the share sale in order to renegotiate EU fiscal rules that state the predicted €3 billion windfall must be used to pay down national debt.
AIB returned to profit in 2014 for the first time since the financial crisis, delivering a pre-tax return of around €1.1 billion. That figure increased to €1.68 billion last year.
Sign up to our newsletter to receive a regular digest of Fora’s top articles delivered to your inbox.
