£36m payday for bankers as Irish bank floats in City

BANKERS and lawyers will enjoy another bumper pay day from the biggest City stock market float for two decades – a listing that will also be a major boost for the British economy.

The Irish government will forge ahead with a public sale of 25pc of Allied Irish Banks (AIB), which was nationalised at the height of the financial crisis.

The company will be valued at up to £11.8bn when it lists in London and Dublin – making it easily the biggest float by a bank since the financial crisis in 2008.

A prospectus with detailed information about the deal has been released revealing that investment banks, lawyers and advisers will pocket £36.3m in fees, paid by AIB.

This figure is unusually low – last year’s £4.4bn float of colostomy bag maker ConvaTec cost £56.2m, considerably more for a much smaller listing – but the bank’s government ownership may have helped it secure a healthy discount.

Banks working on the deal include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Rothschild. Directors of AIB are not thought to be in line for any fees or shares as a result of the float.

City pundits welcomed the proposals. ‘This is good news for London,’ said veteran commentator David Buik of stockbroker Panmure Gordon. The bond between London and Dublin governments is strong despite the threat of Brexit. This deal endorses that perception.’

AIB was saved with £18.3bn of public money as Ireland’s economy collapsed in 2010.

It has made a profit since 2014, and cut the proportion of bad loans on its books from 35pc to 13pc.

The listing comes as banks around the world finally throw off the shackles of the Great Recession and last month the Government sold its remaining shares in Lloyds following a £20.3bn bailout in 2008. The taxpayer made a profit of around £500m.

Wall Street’s recovery ended some years ago, and even Iceland – which experienced one of the worst banking crashes – has lifted capital controls.