“We are delighted with the enthusiasm Bank Of Ireland has shown through out the project and we look forward to their ongoing support in the coming years as we realise our vision for Beacon South Quarter.” Property Customer Landmark Enterprises

"The buy-out of Superquinn was one of the largest ever in the Irish Market and we were delighted to have Bank of Ireland Corporate Banking onboard as they played a key role in the successful completion of the transaction.”Select Retail Holdings

“Property Finance Group at Bank of Ireland Corporate Banking delivered on all our financing needs in a tight timeframe and with the flexibility needed to complete the deal.”Shelbourne Hotel

THE WORSE MAY BE OVER FOR GERMANY

New BoI chief lobbied Council on Dunne's Dublin 4 tower plan

RICHIE Boucher, the newly appointed chief executive of Bank of Ireland lobbied Dublin City Council on behalf of developer Sean Dunne.

Mr Boucher, who took up his post with immediate effect last Wednesday replaces Brian Goggin.

The Sunday Independent can confirm that in October 2007, Mr Boucher revealed his close association with Mr Dunne when he lobbied Dublin City Council on behalf of Mr Dunne's controversial Ballsbridge development proposals.

Mr Boucher's appointment was last week defended by the Government and hailed by Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, who said Mr Boucher was "an excellent person" who would bring a fresh dynamic to the bank.

Labour’s Joan Burton said the choice of Mr Boucher was a missed opportunity to signal a new development in the sector, while Fine Gael’s Kieran O’ Donnell said the appointment sent the wrong signals to international markets. Indepedent Senator, Shane Ross was even more scathing. He called the decision “the most disgraceful appointment in living memory,” saying there was a political and commercial imperative that the bank did not appoint an insider. “There is no one less suitable than Richie Boucher. He is the insider par excellence and deeply embedded in the existing banking culture,” according to Senator Ross.

This is how Dunne recalls what happened next. "I phoned up a very good friend of mine, Richie Boucher... He said, 'Sean, if I was trying to borrow the money you are trying to borrow, I wouldn't stay in Thailand, I'd come back to Dublin.' That was good advice. I came back to Dublin. I then met two banks – I spoke to Bank of Ireland and I spoke to Irish Nationwide – but Paul McDonnell in Ulster Bank, I met him...''

Within days Dunne was in a funding relationship with Ulster, the largest part of Royal Bank of Scotland's Irish operations.

€1.5m pension top-up for BoI chief

Updated: 18:43, Friday, 16 April 2010

Bank of Ireland's chief executive received a once-off €1.5m top-up to his pension last year. This comes on top of an annual salary of €623,000 which is being paid to Richie Boucher.

The bank says there had been a shortfall in Mr Boucher's pension fund and it was obliged to top it up with the payment. The shortfall arose because he assumed a new role as chief executive last year.

Mr Boucher has an option to retire at the age of 55 on a pension of €367,570 a year. The payment was made to the Bank Staff Pension Fund and disclosed in the company's annual report today.

The salary for the position of chief executive of Bank of Ireland was capped at €500,000 by Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan last year. But Bank of Ireland has paid an additional €123,000 to Mr Boucher which it describes as a pension cash allowance.

Consultants brief BoI's Boucher on probity test

SIMON CARSWELL, Finance Correspondent

BANK OF Ireland has hired international consultants Promontory Financial Group to help chief executive Richie Boucher and other directors and executives at the bank prepare for the Central Bank’s fitness and probity tests.

The consultants, who are better known for their work for AIB after the John Rusnak rogue trading scandal at the bank’s Allfirst operations in the United States, have been working with executive and non-executive directors at Bank of Ireland as well as senior managers who will be subjected to the tests.

My final thoughts before I go to bed. He's so obviously thick how can he be in charge of the bank .....

I don't understand why BoI is getting the favoured treatment at all, at all. I thought it was about the shareholders, but the existing ones have been all but wiped out in successive waves of dilution (including the state). I don't believe the loss figures coming out, but Blackrock apparently do?! I unerstand they 'saved' the state in the 'eighties. Perhaps they are being lined up to do the same again?

A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined,
is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him.” Keynes

Barbara Connolly, Paul McDonnell and Sean Martyn have been appointed property finance directors, while John Hunt becomes head of structured property finance.Ulster Bank's property finance division has handled some of the largest property deals in recent years, including Sean Dunne's purchase of Jury's Ballsbridge (with the fastest turnaround ever for a deal of this size), the Beacon Medical Centre and the recent funding of the ?525 million purchase of the Fosse Park shopping centre by Irish investors.

The latter was the largest single retail property acquisition in the UK this decade.

Ulster Bank Property Finance employs approximately 100 people in total, at head office in Dublin and at five regional centres (soon to grow to 9) providing services and investment facilities, mainly to businesses and high net-worth individuals.

It seems to be the case that possibly the most important requirement of anyone who enters a very public position of influence is that they are pretty thick to begin with. This obviously ensures that they are easily handled. Where do we think the phrase "a safe pair of hands came from"?

If a person is capable of independent thought they are also quite obviously capable of sedition.

The real question is who is really appointing the various "safe pairs of hands" in the first instance??