Mr Paddy O'Keeffe, who died on June 5th, was a former Group Chief Executive of AIB and considered one of the major figures in modern Irish banking.
Born in 1921 into a farming family of three boys and two girls, his father was county engineer for North Cork, who apart from fulfilling his role as county engineer, ran the family farm near Newmarket, Co Cork.
One of Mr O'Keeffe's brothers, the late James O'Keeffe, was a former president of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association. Paddy O'Keeffe began his banking career in 1940 as a junior official in the Munster and Leinster Bank, working first in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, then in Mallow, Co Cork. This was followed by a brief period in the Foreign Exchange Department of the bank in Dame Street, Dublin.
His talents soon became apparent to the executive of the Munster and Leinster Bank and in 1950 he was transferred from Dame Street to the head office of the bank at South Mall, Cork. There he was assigned to the Inspection Department, which is now known as The Internal Audit Department.
It was not long before his knowledge of the practice and law of banking, his diligence and application to the task in hand, led him to take on a number of important assignments at head office, including the position of senior inspector and assistant secretary of the bank.
Following the radical changes in Irish banking during the 1960s, and the final amalgamation in 1970 of the three banks which formed Allied Irish Banks, (the Munster and Leinster, the Provincial Bank of Ireland and the Royal Bank of Ireland), he was appointed general manager with responsibility for the Munster region.
Five years later in 1975, he moved again, this time to Dublin where the head office of the bank had been established. He was appointed to a number of senior positions before becoming a director in 1976. The rapid expansion of the bank during the 1970s and the extension of its financial services, both in Ireland and abroad, created a need for new management structures and he was appointed AIB's first group chief executive in 1981, retiring from that position in 1984.
Paddy O'Keeffe was at the core of most of the major developments that took place in AIB during the 1970s and early 1980s. He was responsible for creating and implementing the new regional structures which were put in place following the establishment of the AIB - his single-mindedness ensuring a smooth transfer to radically new methods of branch operations and reporting systems.
He had a deep-rooted interest in, and commitment to, the expansion of the bank abroad, and played a leading role in the purchase by AIB of The First National Bank of Maryland in the US. This successful acquisition, (the first made by an Irish bank in America), and its subsequent extension to other US states, was the cornerstone in establishing AIB as Ireland's largest bank.
His commitment to the bank was matched only by his devotion to his family, his wife, Mary, and three sons, Gerard, Hugh and Pat. He was an intensely private person, shy and reserved in manner, who nevertheless was an awe-inspiring figure in the upper corridors of power in the banking world, capable of inducing an element of reverential respect in those who worked with him. The financial kitchens occupying the upper floors of banking generate intense heat and can at times be dangerously warm places. Paddy O'Keeffe was not a man for idle gossip, or back-slapping bonhomie and certainly not one to address casually on first name terms. Privacy to him was a fundamental birthright and any invasion of that privacy placed an unwary soul in serious peril.
His roots were in the countryside - comfortable with dog, gun, or fishing rod. It is said that he could cast a fly over the nose of a feeding trout at 15 paces, or, in fading light over lonely moorlands, take a brace of snipe out with his twin-barrelled shotgun. On retirement from the bank he took up golf, becoming a member of Woodbrook Golf Club, approaching the game with the same single-minded manner as he did with every other aspect of his life.
Those who knew and became a friend of Paddy O'Keeffe, found in him a truly extraordinary man, who sheltered behind a shy exterior. Many in the world of banking do not believe they will see his likes again.
Paddy O'Keeffe: born 1921; died 1999