Bank of Ireland’s new chief buys almost €13,000 of stock

Bank of Ireland’s chief executive of less than two months, Francesca McDonagh, has acquired an initial €12,740 of shares in the lender.

The Dublin-based bank said in a statement to the stock market on Wednesday that Ms McDonagh, who succeeded Richie Boucher as chief executive at the start of October, bought 2,000 shares at €6.37 each on Tuesday.

The former HSBC executive had to grapple with Bank of Ireland's exposure to an industry-wide tracker mortgage crisis in her first weeks in office. Ms McDonagh oversaw a decision by the bank earlier this month to book a further €150 million to €175 million provision to cover refunds, compensation and other costs relating to the overcharging of mortgage customers.

The increase came as the bank conceded an additional 6,000 customers had either been wrongly denied a low-cost mortgage linked to the European Central Bank benchmark rate, or put on the wrong rate. The bank had previously outlined that 4,300 customers had been impacted by the issue going back as far as almost a decade, including 600 who would have been entitled to a tracker rate.

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This week, Bank of Ireland reached a deal to sell risk related to a portfolio of $1.7 billion (€1.4 billion) of loans to a group of international investors. Davy analysts said that the deal, which boosts the bank's capital, underpins the group's aim to return to dividend payments next year for the first time in a decade.