Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 6 May 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Richie Boucher:

No. I think there was ... For our businesses, you know, Anglo wasn't ... I mean Anglo was a competitor, but it wasn't a competitor across the range of businesses we had. What I was conscious of, even though I wasn't directly interacting with the markets and investors, albeit I met them, was a perception of Anglo ... so like, not a direct competitor, well, it was a competitor but not across all of our businesses. Certainly, there was a market perception that Anglo, their price earnings multiple, i.e. what the market was prepared to pay for their stock as a multiple of their shares, was higher than the bank's. We were hearing that they had a much cleaner business model, that the management were very focused, that they had a great visibility on things like their pipeline of deals, etc. So it was ... the Anglo thing was more about a market perception rather than, I think, interactions and individual parts of our business, with the exception of our property lending activities, at the higher end.