As most people know, the Irish banks were bailed out over a period of around 3 years, to a total of around €64 billion. A breakdown by bank of that amount is as follows:
- Irish Nationwide Building Society (INBS) – €5.4 billion
- Anglo Irish Bank – €29.3 billion
- Bank of Ireland- €4.7 billion
- Permanent TSB (formerly Irish Life & Permanent) – €4 billion
- AIB – €19.8 billion
- EBS – €875 million (which became part of AIB Group in July 2011)
One way to measure the scale of the banking crisis is to compare the bailout amounts to the banks’ operating profits in 2008, before impairments and tax (Bank of Ireland’s annual accounts ended in March 2009, while Anglo Irish Bank ended in September 2008 with the other banks ending December 2008).
Anglo Irish Bank comes out the worst with its bailout equating to 17.8 times the operating profit of €1.64 billion. INBS is a close second place with the bailout figure being 17.7 times its operating profit of €305 million for 2008.
In third place is PTSB with its €4 billion bailout being 16.3 times its 2008 operating profit of €245 million. In 2012, PTSB sold its Irish Life division for €1.3 billion bring the net bailout to €2.7 billion. However it is best to measure the scale of the banking bailout at the time the government had to first start recapitalising the banks, as they would have ultimately had to pay interest on the loans required for bailing out the banks. Even if the bailout is counted at €2.7 billion, then PTSB is still only one place behind.
Next is EBS with its bailout being 12.2 times its 2008 operating profit of €72 million. AIB is next in 5th place with its bailout equalling 7.3 times its 2008 operating profit of €2.7 billion. Bank of Ireland is therefore last with its bailout being only 2.5 times its €1.9 billon operating profit for the year ending March 2009.
The combined operating profits of the 6 banks are €6.86 billion which is 9.3 times smaller than the total €64.1 billion bailout.
Another way to measure the scale of the banking crisis is to work out the bailout amount per the number of employees at each bank, according to its annual reports.
Again, Anglo Irish Bank is the worst bank with its bailout of €29.3 billion equating to €15.7 million for each of its 1,864 staff at the time. Similarly the bailout for INBS works out at €14.03 million for each of its 385 staff in 2008.
The ranks of the banks now change places, with EBS coming next by having a bailout per staff of nearly €1.4 million for its 646 staff at the time. AIB has a bailout of around €765,000 for each of its 25,919 staff recorded at year end 2008. PTSB is close behind with nearly €729,000 required at the time for each of the bank’s 5,490 employees. Once again Bank of Ireland comes out the best with its bailout of €4.7 billion for 15,457 staff, working out at only around €303,000 for each employee.
The total amount of employees at the 6 banks was 49,791 at the time. With a total bailout at €64.1 billion, this works out at nearly €1.3 million per each member of staff.
Irish Facts 