Member Info for johnmcclean

Well at least once before anyway. Post from same poster on 10/10/14. "I'm going to double down on Monday. This firm has improved its position so much in the last 12 months but sp is at the same level.as 12 months ago. We had the high, and we had the nonsense with WR. This thing is going to take off soon. To the moon!" Nothing to say Jez is wrong this time of course.

The IT investment will cost 1 billion and possibly more. The boss had all involved over to london for a serious meeting on the delays even before her official take over date. Seemingly the integration of the new tech was causing a lot of glitches, eg wages not been auto paid, business banking dropping and login problems. The Tech the bank has now is dated to such an extent and the new systems so up to date that it's proving very difficult to seamlessly replace old with new. Its a bit like the school you went to getting rid of the old burned out teacher and replacing them with a young, fantastic, highly intelligent new teacher but they only have a few words of English. On the dividend, I see no talk of it been stopped yet. Most commentators think the bank has enough revenue to keep their word. The cash has been set aside already. However I would not be surprised if on top of tracker repayments the bank is fined substantially for what they did. I personally would suck it up as the right thing to do if it happens even if it impacts the dividend.

Well radar on my first day in the job I'd ban any bank form using " Ireland " in their name. The name should be respected like the flag and not dragged through the mud by well paid, non accountable, suits.

So Bank of Ireland spent years looking into this tracker rip off and came up with 4300 affected customers costing 25mil. A new boss arrives, gets a grilling from Pascal and in 2 weeks finds 10,000 more customers ( including 2000 of its own employees) and an extra bill of �175 mil. WTF. As a tax payer, as a customer, as a shareholder it has to be said that this bank is a cesspit. Richie may be gone but there has to be a lot of top management that Francesca should give the boot to. Not just for swindling their customers but for continuously lying about it and trying to cover it up. At a time when the brand of banking and of Bank of Ireland was already on the floor they have managed to find it a basement level to wallow in. Looking at this from shareholder level this may not be a surprise but it's a vindication of the present share price. That statement yesterday wiped away around 20% of 2017 FY profits. It dragged the NIM down a little and CET1 back from 12.8% to 12.5%. Is that even the end of it? If it was a US bank we would be facing a class action law battle tomorrow costing a billion at the very least, a Fed fine and a SEC investigation. If regulation means anything in Ireland BoI should face a substantial fine to start with. Francesca has a huge job on her hands restoring some sort of trust from many quarters. Word is she is determined to alter the culture and revert to time when staff and customers (and shareholders) had pride in this business. If she does that and can integrate it with the technology for the future she was hired to champion we might eventually gain a bit of pride in this bank and hopefully a few euro as well. The loooong wait continues.

Not a huge surprise. For their market share and big tracker push in the good days it was a surprise how much less than all the other players they set aside at the start of this.

Is our old friend Ross in trouble or might it even go deeper than that. Seems he was a very good friend to his now boss in a time of need.

Observe, maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment but as regards the dividend I think what they are saying is that cash has been set aside in Q317 for a dividend in 2018. From past statements the dividend will be paid in March 18. They have stuck in "potential dividend" and not stated how much they have actually set aside. I don't know why they did that because as you say all the numbers are as expected and perfectly good. I also don't like the line that EVEN IF more tracker compensation is need they have adequate funds to deal with that. Why muddy the waters when they have already said repeatedly 25 million is plenty. It looks to me that the exchange rate might turn in their favor for the rest of the year. The ECB's expected slow tapering will weaken the Euro a bit. The BoE have a tough decision on a rate rise but the 3% inflation rate can't be ignored by them. A .25% rate rise is a reasonable bet. It might be built in a little already but it should at least stabilise the exchange rate. It will be mid to late 2019 before the ECB are in a position to up rates here.

I don't understand why banks in general continue to treat their customers with contempt. This tracker robbery is just one part of the problem. BoI has a chance to set the record straight later today. If they, and other banks fail to come up with satisfactory statements the government will leave this to the Guards and a full criminal investigation. That will leave a cloud over the banks indefinitely.

Big News from Dan...The banks are making too big a PROFIT by charging too high an interest rate on loans. Hardly News at all and for some (shareholders) very good news. I suppose the underlying story here is the contempt many have for the banks in general.

More revelations from Dan O'Brien about irish bank misconduct in the Indo tomorrow.

To deal with the great tracker hoist AIB has set aside 133 million, PSTB 145 million, Ulster bank 245 million but BoI only 25 million. Either BoI is best in class (not that that excuses them for the treatment of their customers) OR they have not set aside enough.

find themselves in a bit of a bind. Inflation at 3% should be a no brainer for a rate rise. it's a full 1% above target. The problem for them is that wage growth is below inflation at a time when employment is at a very low level. In other words if you get a �10 pay rise on Thursday your shopping is �12 higher on the Friday. You are actually worse off. Considering the personal debt levels in the UK, rising rates now would really risk killing off any growth in the economy. Judging by the poor retail sales today thats the last thing they need. Of course, all this inflation is been imported because of the weak pound. A weak pound should be a boost for the economy but because of the amount of food and goods they imported its a double edged sword. They could strengthen STG very quickly by raising interests by 0.5% but....Hence the bind.

QE tapering reported to start in January 18. 50% cut in bond buying but program extended until September 18. If thats the plan then, as expected, there will be no interested rate hike in 2018 and not until well into 2019. could well be 2020.

Ireland is not a whole country but the long term aim of irish people is peaceful UNITY. So why are you attacking 2CV for espousing the same thing, UNITY. Or am I reading you wrong? Are you pro partition? Either way of course it's our business. Anything that weekend the EU has a huge effect on Ireland, just as brexit will.

What ever about DD I'm not sure DoB would get clearance from the competition crowd for a full takeover. The other problem is that as long as he's there INM can't buy any media in Ireland even if they wanted to. I'm surprised DD is not trying to move thing on one way or another

A cash pile on the tip of �100 mil. On a bad day, assets of �100mil. a capitalization of �153mil. What am I missing here? Is this not an obvious take over target, take private or just straight sell? If I had �50 mil I'd buy it myself. Crowd funding anyone?

We will find out on Oct 28th how the pension deficit stands. They don't give much info in their IMS but because of it's effect on the CET1 ratio it will get a mention. The bank is generating steady capital now so the ratio will improve anyway. NIM might improve a bit. I'm basing that on a couple of things. Repayment of very low rated trackers at one end along with cheap borrowing costs. At the other end the bank will have been lending at good rates for new mortgages and also to businesses and an improved farming sector. For the last few years BoI have maintained a good margin on lending rates at the expense of volume ( especially in the mortgage end of things). That may be impossible to maintain for much longer. The competition is going to hammer them if they don't compete soon. In the Independent yesterday there was one very stark comparison. If you had borrowed �500,000 at 4.5% (variable) for 30 years and wanted to switch for a better rate you would make �132,000 of savings if you choose AIB or even �100,000 with KBC. The savings with BoI would be... �0. Their rate IS 4.5%. If you had borrowed �200,000 the savings of switching from BoI to AIB would be �42,000. On fixed rates the difference is much smaller but BoI is just average. The other thing here is up selling. the less loans the less banking in general.

https://hanke.io/debtclock/ireland/ I like this clock for ireland better. Its going in the opposite direction. http://www.financedublin.com/debtclock.php The clocks are not an exact science unless there is someone calibrating them daily. Take ireland for example. this week the NTMA borrowed �4 billion at more or less zero rate. That �4 billion was used to repay the IMF who were charging 1.5% for their loan. They have been refinancing billions at lower rates all year. They also used the AIB sale cash to reduce debt. Then you have the famous Leprechaun economics. It reduced our debt to GDP by 25% overnight. Officially its right but at the end of the day its just creative accounting.

There is one set of figures missing from the clock. Total % debt to GDP which is important. The actual debt each country has is important but the ability of the economy to generate funds to repay the debt is critical. While the US is top of the list its not actually in the worst shape (yet). Its total debt to GDP is just over 100% which isn't great. In other words it would take every single cent the country made in 1 year (and a little bit) to repay all the debt it has. That's bad enough but it would take Japan every cent for 2.5 years and China every cent for 3 years. Ireland could do it in 9 months but seeing as most of our GDP is generated by foreign companies based here they might be a bit pi**ed at us nationalising all their income. There are a couple of interesting figures on the clock. If you look at Japan it's citizens carry a huge % of the countries debt. In Irelands case it's the opposite. the debt, as the result of our bailout, is carried outside the state. The developed countries are a much safer bet to repay debt. They have mature economies with reasonably stable business generating cash. Japan is definitely an exception to the rule. After 20 years of almost no growth they have been on a massive binge of pumping money into the country with nothing to show for it. They have reached a peak and need something more than cash to get off the tread mill. In the case of the US they could very easily end up in the same boat. Admittedly they have more reason to be hopeful that Japan though. China is different from both. their economy is in transition. there is almost definitely going to be a crash but as long as they do not try to bale out their banks or companies affected they will come out the other end with a much stronger economy. The big challenge for them will be the civil unrest as millions of ordinary people get badly burned. When you look at it, Europe is in the least worst state for now. Something for UK should think about maybe?

A couple of years ago I read an article about a big private investor in banks that was ridding himself of all bank stock he owned. His reasoning was that it would be years before banks would make money and the reason for that was because of regulation. Reading the bit below he may have had a point. "The ECB wants lenders to set aside 100% of the value of an unsecured loan within two years and gives lenders seven years to put aside the full amount of a secured loan, such as a mortgage." https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/04/ecb-banks-bad-debt-eurozone-problem-loans