Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 1 December 2016

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Banking Sector in Ireland: Ulster Bank

9:30 am

Mr. Andrew Blair:

We sold very significant chunks of our portfolio for a very specific reason. First, we needed to rebuild our business and move on in terms of building a business that was capable of looking after customers, staff, our stakeholders' interest, both shareholders and regulators. One of the key elements is building a sustainable business and non-performing loans are an impediment to that process to the extent that we did sell an to investment fund. We sold to people in circumstances where those funds are now subject to regulation in terms of the service that looks after them, so from our perspective-----