THE NEW chief executive of Allied Irish Banks, David Duffy, has instructed staff not to solicit customers of Ulster Bank who wish to move as a result of the bank’s recent technical problems.
AIB might also close branches that overlapped with those of subsidiary EBS if it simplified the bank’s business model, Mr Duffy said in an interview with The Irish Times.
The bank will accept customers who wish to move for commercial decisions but Mr Duffy has told his staff not to solicit them. “We instructed the team explicitly and said we do not want to have anybody see or use any information to their advantage,” he said.
He described the problems at Ulster Bank as “a wake-up call”.
Mr Duffy said that if the EU bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, acquired the State’s shareholding in AIB and this helped balance the Government’s books, that would be “a good thing” but the bank had not yet had any discussions on this.
AIB had to adjust lending rates relative to cost of funds, he said, to return it to viability and avoid any dilution in the €21 billion in capital received from the Government.
