Mr. Des Carville:

These are scribbles I made on the bus on the way in this morning. I was just thinking about it, so I am delighted you asked the question.

These items are not in any order. We had to select the selling syndicate, that is, the investment banks that acted on our behalf. We had a huge procurements exercise to make sure we got the best possible advisers. We worked on the listing venue to ensure that the bank was listed. It moved from the junior market in Dublin to the main market in Dublin, as well as to the main market in London. That is a similar arrangement to UK banks, for example. It is really important to buyers on the other side, because they like buying premium-listed companies rather than junior-listed or standard-listed companies.

The bank itself had declared its first dividend and in valuation terms this was an absolute game-changer. We would not have advised the Minister to execute an initial public offering, IPO, if the bank was not paying a dividend. It has that much of a material impact on the valuation of the bank. The bank had also done some work around pension volatility at the end of last year, which is very important from an investor perspective.

We also did our own roadshow. I referred to professional scepticism earlier. Investment banks tell us various things, which sound nice. They want to do a deal because they only get paid if there is a deal. Along with other colleagues including Mr. Rankin and Ms Ann Nolan, the former Second Secretary General to the Department, I travelled to meet a selection of the best investors in the world in London and New York. We satisfied ourselves that they understood the story of AIB, understood the Irish economic situation and were prepared to pay a decent price for the bank.

The bank itself played a huge part in this, in fairness to the chief executive officer, Mr. Bernard Byrne, the chief financial officer, Mr. Mark Bourke, and the rest of the management team. We also attended capital markets day in London. The results came out and we had to assess how the results were received; a week later was capital markets day in London. We all went over to that event and we were in the room for the whole day, talking with the analysts and making sure the offer was resonating.