AIB will miss out on a claim for significant damages from DCC over the Fyffes insider-dealing affair because the bank withdrew a legal action against DCC before the case was ever heard in court.
The investment management arm of AIB was among a number of groups that bought Fyffes shares from DCC six weeks before a Fyffes profit warning in 2000.
AIB Investment Managers initiated a legal action against DCC in early 2002 along with a number of other groups, but the claim lapsed a year later after AIB decided not to pursue the matter.
Four other groups - Eagle Star, Hibernian, Putnam Asset Management and Founders Asset Management - are likely to seek damages in the coming months arising from their purchase of Fyffes shares from DCC.
Following the unanimous Supreme Court ruling against DCC executive chairman Jim Flavin, these groups and Fyffes are free to pursue their actions against DCC. The entire board of DCC is standing by Mr Flavin in spite of the Supreme Court ruling that he held insider information when selling the Fyffes shares.
AIB Investment Managers issued a plenary summons against DCC and others on February 4th, 2002, before the statute of limitations took effect.
Its legal representative in the claim were solicitors McCann FitzGerald. The investment management unit of the bank was then led by Eileen Fitzpatrick.
The chief executive of AIB Group at the time was Michael Buckley, now retired from the bank and currently the senior independent director on DCC's board.
While AIB Investment Managers had a 12-month window in which it could move the case forward by serving a summons on DCC, it did not avail of that opportunity. The claim lapsed because of that.
A spokesman for AIB Investment Managers declined to comment when asked why the bank decided not to pursue the claim.
However, informed banking sources attributed the decision to pull back from the action to the "complex nature of the legal issues involved".
The same sources suggested that the withdrawal of the claim did not necessarily preclude AIB from taking an alternative action for damages on the same issue at a later date.
In a High Court hearing on April 19th, 2005 - which took place in parallel to the main hearings in Fyffes' action against DCC - it emerged that expert reports commissioned by DCC were shared with an unnamed bank.
The court heard then that the reports were given to an unnamed senior banker in an effort to persuade a subsidiary of the bank to abandon counterparty proceedings in the case which had issued but were not yet served.
Subsequent to achieving that purpose, the court heard that DCC also wanted a "devil's advocate" view of the reports.
The reports were shared with two other parties external to DCC.
One of those was Kyran McLaughlin of Davy Stockbrokers. The other was DCC's stockbroker in London, Cazanove.
