February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
AIB’s current CEO, Michael Buckley, had been due to retire in 2006. It is now believed that he will step down sometime within the next six months.
Sheehy has been working at the M&T Bank in the U.S. for the last three years. He was posted here to steady affairs after the scandal of a major currency trading fraud at AIB’s U.S. subsidiary, Allfirst. Sheehy went on to oversee Allfirst’s sale to M&T.
Announcing Sheehy’s appointment, AIB group chairman Dermot Gleeson said: “Choosing the right person to succeed a chief executive of Michael Buckley’s caliber was a difficult task, [but] Eugene will bring a valuable mix of both internal and external experience to the role. I know that he is more than equal to the challenges ahead.”
Sheehy had been widely considered as the favorite to get the post. Although some business analysts felt there would have been sound reasons to appoint someone from outside the company, AIB has virtually no tradition of selecting external candidates for pivotal roles.
AIB’s public image has been battered by scandal in recent years. The Allfirst affair was by far the largest of these, but the bank also got into hot water last year when it emerged that it had overcharged customers through its foreign exchange business for almost a decade. The bank claimed the whole mess was created by an administrative error. It has refunded