Former Logo
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The AIB International Finance Centre in the docklands of Dublin
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99.8% State-owned | |
Industry | Banking |
Founded | September 21, 1966 |
Headquarters | Dublin, Ireland |
Area served
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Ireland, United Kingdom |
Key people
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Services | Financial services |
to €2.6 billion (2015) | |
to €1.4 billion (2015) | |
Number of employees
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10,204 (December 2015) |
Website | www.aib.ie |
Allied Irish Banks (AIB) is one of the so-called "Big Four" commercial banks in Ireland. AIB offers a full range of personal and corporate banking services. AIB Capital Markets is the division of the company that offers international banking and treasury operations. The bank also offers a range of general insurance products such as home, travel, and health insurance. It offers life assurance and pensions through its wholly owned subsidiary, Ark Life Assurance.
In December 2010 the Irish government took a majority stake in the bank, which has since grown to 99.8%. AIB's shares were formerly traded on the Irish Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange, but its shares were delisted from these exchanges following its effective nationalisation. The remaining publicly traded shares of AIB are now listed on the Enterprise Securities Market of the Irish Stock Exchange.
AIB also owns Allied Irish Bank (GB) in Great Britain and First Trust Bank in Northern Ireland. In November 2010, it sold its 22.5% stake in M&T Bank in the United States. At the beginning of 2008 AIB entered the Latvian, Estonian and Lithuanian markets by acquiring AmCredit mortgage finance business from the Baltic – American Enterprise Fund.
In 2009, Allied Irish Banks along with its competitor Bank of Ireland accepted a 3.5 billion euro bailout from the government of the Republic of Ireland as a part of the Bank Recapitalisation Scheme. By March 2011 the total sum of required bailout was expected to climb up to 13.3 billion euro.
Allied Irish Banks is usually referred to, both inside and outside the company, simply as AIB and often by its trade name of "Allied Irish Bank" (singular). In Northern Ireland, however, the bank trades as First Trust Bank, while in Great Britain, it is called "Allied Irish Bank (GB)"—the only part of the operation where the full name, in the singular, is still in day-to-day use.
Initially, the bank operated under the names of its former constituent companies, alongside a new AIB logo, a circle divided in three with an "A" at the centre. From 1970, these were replaced by "Allied Irish Banks". In 1990, AIB introduced a new logo (prompted, it was said in some quarters, by the remarkable similarity between its previous logo and that of Mercedes-Benz.) Since then, the bank has preferred to be referred to as "AIB", though "Allied Irish Banks plc" remains its legal name.