THE GOVERNMENT should consider offering a long-term incentive to attract suitable candidates for the post of chief executive of Allied Irish Banks, the bank’s executive chairman David Hodgkinson said yesterday.
A salary cap of €500,000 is in place for such positions whereas equivalent posts elsewhere might command up to €2 million.
Mr Hodgkinson suggested at the MacGill Summer School that an extra incentive should be considered for the post.
“We have looked internationally across the world for potential candidates to run AIB, because in reality, within Ireland, I’m afraid, senior bankers in the main have already been involved with the problems of the past and therefore there isn’t a big selection of domestic bankers to look at.
“There is clearly a possibility that we will find someone who meets all the requirements and that we can get for the €500,000 pay cap. All the candidates – and we do have several very good candidates that are still in the running – are absolutely aware of the situation.
“But the risk is that once we get to the end [of the process] – the regulator has to interview candidates, the Government would like to meet them as well – if they all drop out because they can get paid better elsewhere, where does that leave us? I’m not trying to force the Government’s hand on this issue but equally I want the best for AIB and for the banking system in this country.”
He was not advocating a base- pay higher than €500,000 but “a long-term incentive, let’s say after five years” for achieving the Government’s objectives.
Comparing the crisis in the banks to the fate of late racing-driver Ayrton Senna, he said: "In the excellent film Senna. . . there is a scene where suddenly a new racing car comes on to the circuit and starts winning everything.
“Senna, like all the racing drivers, becomes obsessed and wants the same technology as this car so he can burn up the track.
“The scene could be a metaphor for what happened in Irish banking. Everybody, or most at least, in Irish banking sought to ‘out-Anglo’ Anglo and the carnage at the end has not, metaphorically, been much different from what happens at the end of the Senna documentary.”
