Friday, August 14, 2009

CIBC and AIB

RTE is reporting that Canadian bank CIBC is interested in buying a share in AIB but only if NAMA goes through and the bad debt held by AIB gets transferred to the taxpayer. Personally I think if foreign banks are waiting to jump in and buy Irish banks once NAMA comes into force it indicates that perhaps we the taxpayer are taking on too much bad debt and we are creating private banks that are internationally seen as good deals. After NAMA completes its work we should have Irish banks that can continue to operate in the Irish market and provide funds to people and small businesses but they should still have work to do to undo years of bad management. If the Irish taxpayer takes all the hurt and international banks take all the profit what is the point?

On the up side perhaps if CIBC do buy AIB it will be easier to transfer money between the two banks because right now you seem to have to have studied with Harry Potter in Hogsworth to figure out the magical combination of time, forms and numbers to fill in online in order to get the current system to accept an international transfer.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I own shares in AIB and I have found it to be a very closed entity with no respect for shareholders. Trying to communicate with them to get information has proved to be impossible. I would like to see CIBC take a controlling share interest so that we would hopefully see a much better quality of management. Canadian banks have come through this severe recession very well, mainly due to good control of risk factors.