BANK OF Ireland is to name Pat Molloy, a former chief executive of the bank, as its new governor to replace Richard Burrows when he steps down next month.

Mr Molloy (70), a former chairman of Enterprise Ireland and building materials firm CRH, will be appointed to the court (board) of the bank by Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan as one of four directors representing the taxpayer under the State’s €3.5 billion recapitalisation deal.

The bank is set to appoint him to the post of governor in a move that will make Mr Molloy the first Government-appointed director of a bank to become chairman of a guaranteed financial institution.

An announcement is expected from the bank today.

Mr Burrows will step down as governor following the bank’s annual general court (meeting) on July 3rd.

Mr Molloy’s tenure as chief executive of Bank of Ireland in the 1990s is well-regarded following the bank’s failed investment in US bank First New Hampshire, the largest lender in New Hampshire, in the 1980s.

He succeeded Mark Hely Hutchinson in 1991 and was replaced by his deputy Maurice Keane – who is now a Government appointee to the board of Anglo Irish Bank – in 1998 on his retirement from the bank.

Financier Dermot Desmond, a shareholder in Bank of Ireland, suggested the appointment of Mr Molloy as an interim chief executive of the bank for a period of 18 months in a letter to Mr Burrows last March opposing the appointment of insider Richie Boucher.

Mr Molloy will join fellow State-appointed directors Tom Considine and Joe Walsh at the bank. The Government’s fourth director on the court has yet to be named.

The banking crisis has led to the departure of five chief executives and five chairman at the banks.

Gillian Bowler at Irish Life Permanent is the only chairman to have survived the cull of senior executives in the financial sector.