Anglo Irish Bank announces another record loss
Anglo Irish Bank has announced the biggest loss in Irish corporate history.
Losses at the nationalised bank hit €17.7bn in 2010.
A statement from the bank has described last year as "another exceptionally difficult 12-month period".
"The year 2010 was another very difficult year for the Bank and for the Irish economy," said the chairman Alan Dukes' statement.
"Commercial property prices are a key determinant of the Bank’s performance, given its historical over-concentration in the sector.
"In Ireland, prices continued to fall. However, signs of stability are beginning to emerge in some sectors of the market in the UK and US."
The losses include impairment charges of €7.8bn, and a loss of €11.5bn on disposal of assets to Nama.
"This extremely disappointing result for the year has been driven by €14.1bn of losses associated with Nama assets and further impairments on other assets of the bank of €5.2bn," said a statement from the group chief executive Mike Aynsley.
"The Bank made an operating profit of €1.8bn before these impairments, due mostly to a €1.6bn gain on the repurchase and restructure of subordinated debt instruments following a liability management exercise which was completed late in the year."
At the end of the year, the Bank held a total of €36.9bn of nominal loan assets, of which €17.6bn were impaired.
Cumulative specific impairments on these assets totalled €8.9bn, a coverage ratio of 51%.
Nominal assets of €33.9bn were transferred to Nama during the year with associated losses on transfer of €11.5bn, including a Nama bond fair value adjustment of €2.2bn. The average haircut on assets transferred was 62%.
Cumulative impairment provisions on these Nama assets before transfer totalled €11.9bn.
