IRISH LIFE Investment Managers (ILIM) hasn’t endeared itself to the top brass at Bank of Ireland Asset Management (Biam) by suggesting that it would be interested in buying its domestic rival.

“I don’t know if they have a serious interest or not. I don’t speak to them,” Biam’s interim chief executive Chris Johns told me this week.

A merger of ILIM and Biam would give the merged entity a majority stake in the Irish market, something that you would imagine would fall foul of the Competition Authority.

“I can see that there would be competition issues but I’ve also seen how competition issues in other jurisdictions have been overridden in the interests of creating national champions,” Johns said candidly.

But the Biam boss, who doubles as its chief investment officer, sees ILIM’s interest very much as mischief-making by its rival at a time when his business is on the block for sale following an agreement between Bank of Ireland and the European Commission over State aid.

“What they want to be able to do is to destabilise my business,” he says bluntly. “They want to be able to sit in front of my customers and say ‘gosh, isn’t it awful about Biam? Morale must be on the floor now . . . those poor people, I do feel for them. You know what happens when morale goes down the tubes, Mr Client? Performance inevitably follows. Much as I feel for them you might want to think about moving your money’.”

Johns didn’t stop there. “Its a game, it’s free and everybody plays it.

“I have my doubts about whether its a serious proposition.”