Is it the case that they just didn't actually comprehend risk or recognise how to price it?
Should have been charging 25% interest on all their property speculation loans.
Were they being judged by the markets on the size of their loans books and given bonuses accordingly.

My, somebody is Grumpy today

Did BOI cut your overdraft limit?

Well I was referring more to the manner in which a guy with the track record of Mr Boucher can secure a position as head of a "pillar" bank.

But yes, obviously, the wider system encouraged institutions and by extension, individuals, to chase ever greater profits to the exclusion of any level of sanity.

Problem as I see it is these are the very guys who have spouted the quasi social-Darwinist mantra in relation to all manner of human relations including business dealings for as long as I can remember. Such belief actually fed the entitlement culture which these people helped create. The narrative was that these guys were where they were because they had scrapped hard and won. They were winners and role models.

However, when the shoe ended up on the other foot ie it turned out that they are actually "LOSERS" (to use their own ugly-type parlance), not only were their organisations "too big to fail" but the individuals themselves refused to go away - and some such as Mr Boucher, reincarnate as fucking Chief Executives!!

So whats the truth here? If there is no meritocracy, if there is no capitalism in the sense of any risk attaching to the actions of such characters and their institutions, what is there?

Who or what is deciding who and what do and rise to what and where they do?

How does this society really work??

Ordinarily I wouldnt really care less if a load of overweight jocks want to play masters of the universe amongst themselves. However, when I or my family are expected to pick up the tab for their idiocy, surely the very least I can expect is to be told what exactly the fuck it is that I am paying for?

Is that too much to ask? Or is that the most ridiculously naive question to be posed on the Pin....ever??

New leaders needed in banks or 'trust won't be restored' -- Aynsley

By Emmet Oliver

Friday September 09 2011

Pressure on Bank of Ireland chief executive Richie Boucher to give up his CEO role appeared to increase yesterday when his fellow bank boss Mike Aynsley said there needed to be new bank leadership in Ireland or "trust" couldn't be restored to Irish banking.

While not mentioning any individuals, he said that Financial Regulator Matthew Elderfield needed to be "strict" and insist that anyone in place in senior positions before the crisis should no longer be at the top of Irish banking.

"The Regulator has to be very strict on it,'' said Mr Aynsley, who was speaking after addressing a meeting of the Leinster Society of Chartered Accountants. At that meeting he said Ireland needed more than just two pillar banks if the "broken" banking system was to be repaired.

He also reiterated that his bank, Anglo Irish Bank, would keep pursuing ex-CEO David Drumm, regardless of the legal costs involved.

New people were needed at the top of the banks, said Mr Aynsley, and a "renewal" of boards was a "pre-requisite" for rebuilding trust in Irish banking.

Those close to Aynsley denied that he was pursuing any senior management roles in AIB or Bank of Ireland himself, and he was careful to tell reporters yesterday he was not in any way talking about specific individuals.

However, Mr Boucher, who headed up Bank of Ireland's Irish retail division before the crash, is facing a fitness and probity test later this year from Mr Elderfield and the bank is already preparing its senior management for this exercise.

Questioned about his role as a director and senior executive of the bank when it engaged in reckless lending in the run-up to the 2008 financial crash, Mr Boucher said that it was "a matter of record that I held a senior position in Bank of Ireland". He declined to be drawn on criticism of him remaining on as chief executive.

"I have been appointed to a job; I am doing that job," he said.

Asked whether the bank accepted culpability for the difficulties that mortgage borrowers were in, Mr Boucher said the bank had made mistakes and was trying to rectify them by working with customers.

Mr Boucher declined to comment on his support for Sean Dunne's proposed redevelpoment of the Jurys Hotel site in Ballsbridge or whether he viewed the project as an example of reckless lending by the banks.

Speaking generally about the lending by the bank, he said that Bank of Ireland had "absolutely acknowledged that we lent too much to the property market" and that it had made mistakes on its property lending, didn't have enough capital in reserve to cover loan losses and had become too reliant on wholesale funding.

Defending his position, Mr Boucher, who was appointed to the board in 2006, said that he had stood for re-election to the board on three occasions and that each time more than 90 per cent of shareholders had voted for his re-election.

"I wouldn’t have any great confidence in your stewardship in the past and possibly going into the future," said Labour TD Kevin Humphreys.

"We do not believe that we have capital problems," Richie Boucher, chief executive of Irish retail financial services at Bank of Ireland (BKIR.L), told the finance committee of Ireland's parliament.

"The issues that we face are more down to liquidity rather than capital," he said, adding that he did not believe, however, that there was a Northern Rock equivalent "lurking" in Ireland.
...
Bank of Ireland's Boucher said he expected the problems caused by the global credit crisis to last at least until the end of this year.

"Our profits are a matter of record," Boucher said. "We do not anticipate that we will make the same amount of money this year as we did last year."

The Central Bank has warned the chief executives of Bank of Ireland, Irish Life and Permanent and EBS that they may be investigated as part of the regulator’s new fitness and probity rules.

The three bankers are the only remaining executives on the boards of the State-backed banks who have held their jobs since before the beginning of the financial crisis in 2008.

The regulator has stepped up plans to scrutinise long-serving bank executives, issuing letters last month to Bank of Ireland chief executive Richie Boucher, Irish Life and Permanent chief executive Kevin Murphy, and Fergus Murphy, chief executive of EBS.

The Central Bank warned them that there may be grounds to investigate their roles at their institutions prior to the banking crisis under the fitness and probity rules.

Responses were sought from the bankers on the possibility that an investigator could be appointed to examine their pre-crisis roles.

The tests came into effect last month as part of sweeping regulatory reforms introduced in the wake of the €63 billion banking crisis.

...
The investigations will determine whether their actions prior to the 2008 bank guarantee, which the Government believed would save the banking sector, contributed to the subsequent cost of the State bailouts of their institutions.

...
Mr Boucher was appointed to the board of Bank of Ireland in 2006 and played a pivotal role in the growth of the bank’s lending to the property sector from 2004.

Bank directors go on the defence

THREE LONG-SERVING directors of the banks were given until the end of this month to respond to the Central Bank’s view that they may be investigated over their pre-crisis roles at the banks, under new fitness and probity rules for bankers.

Irish Life Permanent chief executive Kevin Murphy responded by resigning as a director of its banking company and said that this eliminated him from the Central Bank’s scrutiny.

Fergus Murphy, chief executive of EBS, can argue strongly that he had nothing to do with the implosion of the former building society. His appointment just nine months before the Government bank guarantee of September 2008 strengthens his position.

Murphy’s record at EBS should stand to him. He stopped development lending, the reason for most of EBS’s losses, and nationalisation, shortly after taking over.

The position of Bank of Ireland chief executive Richie Boucher is less assured. After joining from Ulster Bank in 2003, he was head of corporate banking and grew property lending initially through a team led by Gerry Burke.

After Boucher became head of the Irish retail operations in 2006, he continued lending to developers at the direction of chief executive Brian Goggin and the board.

Boucher does have a few cards to play to support his case to stay on as Bank of Ireland chief executive, a job he took over in early 2009.

He could argue that the Central Bank’s tests must assess whether he is fit and proper to keep his current job, that of chief executive.

In that role, he has limited the State’s bailout to €4.2 billion and avoided Government control.

The public support for Boucher from the bank’s new private investors, who hold a 35 per cent stake, will also stand to him.

The Government’s sale of this stake to the investors complicates matters for Minister for Finance Michael Noonan who asked last April (three months before the sale) for all bank directors at the time of the guarantee to resign.

The independent arbitrator appointed by the Central Bank to assess whether Boucher’s pre-crisis role should be investigated will have plenty to weigh up.

Bank bosses who survived crisis to make cases for remaining in jobs

By Laura Noonan

Saturday January 28 2012

THREE bank bosses who survived the crisis are set to tell the Central Bank that the work they have done since 2008 should count towards an imminent assessment of whether they're "fit and proper" to remain in their jobs.

Bank of Ireland's (BoI) chief Richie Boucher, Irish Life & Permanent boss Kevin Murphy and EBS chief executive Fergus Murphy must all deliver their initial submissions to the Central Bank's 'fitness and probity' review by next week.

The trio are being assessed as they are the only directors of bailed-out banks who were on board before the 2008 guarantee and who remain in place.

Financial Regulator Matthew Elderfield has described the review as covering directors' "competence and track record in the period leading up to the financial crisis".

However, the Irish Independent has learned that the directors are likely to argue that their performance after the government guarantee was brought in should also be taken into account.

Praised

BoI's Mr Boucher is likely to point out that his institution has managed to raise substantial private cash since the crisis hit, greatly lessening the need for taxpayer funds.

...

While all three will file their lengthy submissions to the Central Bank within days, it could be several months before the authorities decide whether there are grounds to open a full investigation into any of the cases.

Some sources have suggested the final outcome won't be known until the summer.

It's expected inside BOI that he's a dead man walking. Lots of jockeying for positions already going on.

Anger at bankers is no basis for public policy

Irish Home

By Laura Noonan Banking Correspondent

Thursday February 02 2012

SO it has come to this -- a state-owned bank using what is essentially taxpayers' cash to prepare its chief executive for a state-run investigation into whether he was part of the reason that his institution needed taxpayers' cash in the first place.

When the Irish people demanded retribution for the horrendous cost of the banking crisis, that was hardly what they were hoping for.

But that is indeed where we find ourselves, as the Central Bank cranks up its 'fitness and probity' review into whether 'legacy' directors should be allowed to stay or be forced out because they contributed to the demise of their institutions.

When the review was announced by Financial Regulator Matthew Elderfield last spring, the effort was greeted with praise from a public delighted that someone was finally going to hold the bankers to account.

But more than a year on, it's worth taking stock and looking at what exactly we're trying to achieve here.

Just three bankers are now being considered by the Central Bank -- Bank of Ireland's chief Richie Boucher, EBS boss Fergus Murphy and Irish Life & Permanent's top man Kevin Murphy. All their other peers had bowed out before the review got going.

Mr Boucher has questions to answer about his pre-2008 career at the bank -- most particularly his role, if any, in the bank's building up of a sizable property loan book from 2004. But his bank has emerged from the crash in better shape than all its peers and has avoided nationalisation. He is hardly Sean FitzPatrick or David Drumm.

EBS's Fergus Murphy only joined the then building society at the start of 2008 and was literally out of the continent for the height of the Celtic Tiger years.

IL&P's Kevin Murphy spent most of his career at the PLC's life-insurance arm.

That's not to say the trio all covered themselves in glory, but should the public really be focusing their anger on these three?

They are also doing rather important jobs. Mr Boucher is trying to prove that BoI can be rehabilitated as a bank that can raise debt and attract blue-chip investment.

Fergus Murphy is heading up the transformation project at beleaguered AIB, into which his former building society has been subsumed. Meanwhile, his namesake in IL&P is central to efforts to sell Irish Life Assurance and save the taxpayer from stumping up another €1bn.

It could now be as long as six months before they find out definitively if they will be allowed to stay in their jobs.

It's not a popular question, but would the country gain more from having the trio concentrate 100pc on their day jobs rather than having them spend endless months preoccupied by investigations into crises past?

It's not a popular question, but would the country gain more from having the trio concentrate 100pc on their day jobs rather than having them spend endless months preoccupied by investigations into crises past?