Mr David Went, Irish Life's new managing director, will join the board on January 1st 1998, it was confirmed yesterday. Mr Went, who is succeeding Mr David Kingston, is the chief executive of Coutts, bankers to Queen Elizabeth of England, and private banking arm of NatWest in London, and the former chief executive of Ulster Bank. He will formally take over in April of next year.

Mr Went, a barrister by training, yesterday insisted that the opportunity to run an operation like Irish Life was irresistible for any Irish person.

"It is an opportunity to do something exciting," he said. "Irish Life is a very powerful player, with a large share of the life and pensions market, as well as general insurances and its other associated companies. It is also well capitalised and profitable, as well as having interesting oversees developments."

Irish Life has already bid for New Ireland and is hopeful of hearing the result in the near future. The group is also likely to plan further acquisitions. Yesterday Mr Went said he believed the organisation could grow both by acquisition and by growing its existing businesses.

Mr Kingston told the board he wanted to leave almost a year ago. He has been chief executive for almost 14 years and is understood to feel that the time has now come to move on. He will not be working full-time for another institution, but has not yet decided what he will do.

Irish Life's chairman, Mr Conor McCarthy, said Mr Went was a "superb" appointment for Irish Life.

"He is one of the leading executives in financial services in these islands," he said. "And he has a thorough knowledge of the Irish financial services market. Through his experiences in Coutts he is very familiar with the UK, US and European markets in which we are also active."

Mr McCarthy also pointed to Mr Went's banking background, which he said would be "invaluable" as the group moves towards being a broad-based financial service provider.

Mr Went signed the contract one week ago, after being headhunted by Irish Life. The executive recruitment group, Amrop, came up with a short list of three or four names who were all interviewed prior to Mr Went being selected.

He said his main strength was that he understood how to manage quite complex financial services businesses, having run a merchant bank as well as a private bank. He added that the barriers had been coming down between the different types of financial service providers and there were all sorts of opportunities in Ireland, as it was a little way behind Britain. He added that consolidation was likely in the Irish financial services sector over the years ahead and the market was becoming more competitive. "I'm not sure that all the providers can survive in the long run," he said.

When questioned about Irish Life's poor investment performance, Mr Went said he was confident that Ms Sileanne Wooton, who was joining from AMP in London, would make a difference.