DAVID HODGKINSON was yesterday hailed as the Wyatt Earp of the “financial Wild West”, but AIB’s new executive chairman was also warned to watch his back.
Shareholders were effusive in their welcome for Mr Hodgkinson, who is seen as coming to the job free of baggage and cronyism.
The first shareholder to take the microphone yesterday declared that it was one of the happiest days of his life, before waxing lyrical about the new chairman.
“You are as welcome as the flowers in May to Dublin, as Wyatt Earp to Tombstone, as Eliot Ness to Chicago, as Jonathan Harker to Transylvania,” he said.
The vampire theme was stretched a little further to express the shareholder’s dismay at the bank’s public-interest directors (appointed in 2008 and 2009) who, he said, had “let the Irish people down”.
“For the past two years, AIB has been roaming the Irish countryside like Count Dracula sucking the blood out of the economy while masquerading as a blood bank for Irish businesses screaming out for transfusions,” he said.
He warned Mr Hodgkinson, who worked as group chief operating officer in HSBC until retiring in 2008, that nothing he had done in his past life would have prepared him for the horror of “the cesspool of malfeasance” at AIB.
Mr Hodgkinson was advised by another shareholder to spend at least 51 per cent of his time watching his back.
Another investor, Dave Johnson, warned him to be careful and “keep one eye over your shoulder”, as many of the people who transformed AIB into “a national embarrassment” were still there and did not seem too welcoming to the new chairman.
Shareholder Cornelius Cagney wondered why nobody in the bank had been held accountable, even though they traded recklessly.
“Nobody gets jail but [the] poor person,” Mr Cagney said.
White-collar criminals were “untouchables”.
Shareholders did not pass on the chance to take a few last digs at outgoing managing director Colm Doherty, who stepped down from AIB’s board yesterday, and who was conspicuous by his absence at the egm.
One elderly shareholder, who has had to return to work because he has lost so much money, made the point that the captain of the HMS Astute, the British submarine that recently ran aground, may face court martial.
He wondered why Mr Doherty, who was “responsible for a portion of the damage” done to AIB, would not be made accountable “as would happen in the Army”.
Mr Hodgkinson was very open in discussing the terms of his own appointment with shareholders, but, when pressed to divulge details of Mr Doherty’s pension arrangements, he said he could not do so for confidentiality reasons.
Shareholders were not easily appeased and one argued that members of the board should not “get paid a penny going out the door”.
Speaking with reporters after the meeting, Mr Hodgkinson said he was not surprised by the level of anger among shareholders, saying that they were “remarkably calm and civil”. He said he fully understood their right to be angry.
