ANGLO IRISH Bank hopes to have a European Commission ruling on its latest restructuring plan by the end of July.
In an internal memo to staff circulated yesterday, chief executive Mike Aynsley said the bank was working to finalise the revised version of its restructuring plan.Anglo will submit the plan to the Government by the end of the month, he said.
The bank, along with the Department of Finance, then expects to spend some time in dialogue with the commission on the details of the plan over June and July.
“While I would like to think we will have a formal outcome by end July, I accept the reality that the European summer holiday period may delay progress in Brussels,” he said in the memo.
“We will keep whatever pressure on that we can to achieve an early outcome.”
He said the bank continued to believe that their future lay in the creation of a new banking entity, which would continue to oversee a portfolio of performing loans in Ireland, Britain and the United States. Anglo’s aim is that this entity would become a mid-sized corporate and commercial bank.
Alongside this “good bank”, there would be an asset rundown company, which would handle the problem loans remaining on the nationalised bank’s books after the Nama process.
Mr Aynsley said the current concentration was on refining the analysis and providing supporting detail to its proposal.
He thanked staff for the significant work that has gone into developing the revised restructuring plan.
“Clearly we are going through a difficult time,” he told staff. “Our inability to present full clarity around the future of the bank until after the EC approval process concludes makes it difficult for staff.”
He said he understood that staff morale could be low, but he said it was important to reflect on the “significant progress” the bank had made over the past year.
As reported earlier this week in The Irish Times, he said the bank’s new executive team plans to begin a phased move to the bank’s Burlington Road offices at the end of June.
“The reason for this move is to begin to break ties with the bank’s old headquarters and move towards a new . . . structure,” Mr Aynsley told employees.
The memo confirmed that €9.32 billion in loans had been transferred to Nama earlier this month at an average haircut of 55 per cent, and that the bank had received the €4.16 billion in bonds due as part of the transaction.
“We expect Tranche 2 of the loans to begin transferring to Nama from mid-June onwards,” he said.
Mr Aynsley said he planned to visit the bank’s operations in the US next month for the first time since he took over as group chief executive eight months ago.
