Me Blog!

It was interesting listening to the news on the radio this morning while driving to college to hear that the opposition parties are not too happy at the appointment of Richie Boucher as the new head of Bank of Ireland.I imagine they are not pleased because Mr. Boucher was already a BoI employee having taken up employment in 2003 upon leaving RBS. The opposition parties were hoping that an external choice would be made to bring in new blood as it were. However as Brian Lenihan explained, they couldn’t get anyone for the job as the “renumeration” package isn’t attractive enough having a cap placed on them by the government.

Quite an example of  being between a rock and a hard place for Mr. Lenihan.

But let’s return to Mr. Boucher’s former employees; The Royal Bank of Scotland.  You may or may not know it but RBS is the United Kingdom’s equivilent of Anglo Irish Bank as it is largely owned by their government. Their annual report was announced today and while they recorded a record breaking loss, it was not as bad as was expected.

In stark comparison to Ireland, the government of the United Kingdom seem to be quite pleased at the performance of Steven Hester whom they installed after taking over the reins of RBS.

So pleased in fact that a U.K. parliament member was quoted on the radio today gushing over Mr. Hester saying words to the effect that he is so tough that “He swallows nails and spits out rust..”

Someone’s happy then!

Anyway, the United Kingdom’s leaders seem to have some confidence in Mr. Hester. I wonder how our Government feel now about Mr Boucher knowing that he ws only given the job because he was one of only two who applied? And why did only two apply? Well the job is only worth a mere €250,000 per year.

Regardless of the pay I doubt if it will go any way  to restoring shareholders confidence knowing that both of those that applied for the position were already BoI employees!