A look at the main players in Irish banking
AIB
Chief executive: Eugene Sheehy
Eugene Sheehy (54) has worked at AIB for more than 35 years and was one of the first bankers to suffer a pay cut as the banking sector troubles emerged last year. Sheehy's remuneration package arrived at €2.1 million in 2007, down €358,000 on the previous year.
Sheehy, who succeeded Michael Buckley as AIB chief executive in 2005, is originally from Dublin and was educated at the Salesian College in Limerick. He lives in Donnybrook and is married with two children.
He first joined AIB at 17, working in the branches. He became manager of AIB's branches in Capel Street, Dame Street and Phibsboro and rose up to become head of the bank's retail operations in Ireland.
He was then dispatched by Buckley to AIB's US operations in 2002 to handle the fallout from the $691 million (€492 million) currency trading fraud committed by John Rusnak at AIB's Allfirst subsidiary in Baltimore, Maryland. Within six weeks, he was appointed executive chairman of Allfirst and oversaw the investigation into the fraud and the sale of the bank to M&T Bank.
He became head of M&T's mid-Atlantic division. He was recalled to Ireland to take up the top post.
He had been the favoured internal candidate for the job, which some had expected would go to an outsider following severe criticism of AIB's corporate culture in the wake of overcharging scandals.
Sheehy's 14 per cent pay cut last year was implemented as AIB's pretax profits shrank by 4 per cent to €2.5 billion in 2007. It increased its dividends to shareholders 10 per cent to 79 cent per share. The interim (half-year) dividend paid to shareholders in 2008 has also increased 10 per cent.
Chairman: Dermot Gleeson
Dermot Gleeson (60) is a barrister and former Government adviser who has held a number of senior positions in public and business life. He is also chairman of University College Cork's governing body.
For his services to AIB, Gleeson was paid fees of €475,000 in 2007, up from €408,000 the previous year.
Born in Cork, he was educated at Blackrock College in Dublin. He qualified as a barrister at the King's Inns, following in the footsteps of his father, and was first called to the bar in 1970. He was appointed a Senior Counsel in 1979 when he was just 30.
In recent years, he was a director of Independent News & Media from 2000 to 2004. He joined the board of AIB in 2000 and was appointed as its chairman in 2003.
Bank of Ireland
Chief executive: Brian Goggin
Brian Goggin (56) has worked in the bank since 1969. He took over as group chief executive in 2004. Before taking the top job, he headed Bank of Ireland Asset Management (BIAM) during a period of major growth. Mr Goggin helped set up a corporate banking division in Bank of Ireland in the 1970s.
He worked in the bank's New York branch for about six years and in credit and mortgages in Britain for about five years. He rose rapidly through the ranks on his return to Ireland.
Mr Goggin took a 25 per cent pay cut last year, with his annual remuneration package falling to €2.972 million from €3.998 million. The package comprised a basic salary of €1.155 million and a performance bonus of €323,000.
He also received €841,000 from the release of bonuses from previous years. In addition, he was paid €1.025 million in other remuneration. A large portion of this was a payment in lieu of pension payments. He also holds more than 600,000 shares in the bank.
Mr Goggin is a past president of the Institute of Bankers. He attended Oatlands College CBS in Stillorgan, Co Dublin, and trained as a chartered accountant. He also holds an MSc in business administration from Trinity College Dublin.
He is married with a grown-up family of three children and lives in Foxrock.
Chairman: Richard Burrows
Richard Burrows (62) is governor of the court of directors of Bank of Ireland (chairman of the board). He has been a bank director since 2000, becoming deputy governor in 2002 and governor in 2005.
Educated at Wesley College in Dublin, he began working at the age of 17 when he joined Stokes Brothers and Pim, a group that eventually became part of KPMG, as a trainee accountant. In 1971, he joined sprits distributor Edward Dillon, part of Irish Distillers. By 1978, he was managing director.
A decade later, having become the target of a hostile takeover bid, the company opted to align itself with Pernod Ricard. Mr Burrows stayed in charge at the Irish business and, in 2000, became joint chief executive of Pernod Ricard until his retirement in 2005.
Last year, he earned €512,000 for his role at the bank, up 6 per cent on the €483,000 he was paid in the 12 months to the end of March 2007. At the end of the March 2008, he held 358,487 shares in Bank of Ireland.
Mr Burrows is a past president of Ibec and CIÉ and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland. He is married with three adult daughters and a son - Olympic sailor David Burrows. He lives in Portmarnock.
Anglo Irish Bank
Chief executive: David Drumm
David Drumm (41), who was appointed chief executive of Anglo Irish Bank in 2004, is one of a younger generation of bankers to have risen to prominence in recent years.
In Anglo Irish Bank's fiscal year covering the 12 months to the end of September 2007, Drumm was paid €3.274 million, although this pay covers just two months of the current financial crisis, when the extent of Anglo's exposure to bad debts and difficult market conditions were not yet known.
Anglo made profits of €1.243 billion during that period and paid a dividend of 19.49 cent on each share to shareholders.
From Skerries, Co Dublin, he was educated by the Christian Brothers, and lives in Malahide. He is married with two daughters. He trained as a chartered accountant and qualified with one of the Big Four accountancy firms, Deloitte, before moving to Enterprise Equity, a venture capital company charged with supporting investments in businesses in the Border counties.
He briefly returned to work as an accountant at Bastow Charleton but months later took an assistant manager's position at Anglo Irish Bank in 1993. He moved rapidly through the ranks and, in 1997, went to Boston to set up a new banking operation. Five years later, he returned to head the bank's lending operations.
His appointment as chief executive at 37 came as a surprise to analysts at the time. His is said to be something of an American history buff.
Chairman: Seán FitzPatrick
It was under the stewardship of Seán FitzPatrick (60) that Anglo Irish Bank came from small roots to gain a place in the top echelon of Irish institutions.
FitzPatrick, who lives in Greystones, Co Wicklow, was the bank's chief executive for 22 years before moving into the role of chairman and making way for his successor, David Drumm.
FitzPatrick was paid €431,000 for his role as chairman of the bank for the 12 months to the end of September 2007, a period that precedes the worst of the financial crisis. Born in Bray, he went to Presentation College before getting a BComm at UCD and qualifying as a chartered accountant.
He joined Anglo Irish in 1978 and became a director in 1985 and chief executive in 1986 before becoming non-executive chairman in 2004, at which stage his shares in the bank were worth €50 million.
He serves on the board of Aer Lingus and is chairman of Smurfit Kappa. He is married with two sons and one daughter.
Irish Life & Permanent
Chief executive: Denis Casey
Appointed to the top job at Irish Life & Permanent in May last year, Denis Casey (48) is a long-serving employee of the company.
He left school at 16 and his first job was as a post boy. Casey was paid a total of €1.36 million in 2007, which included a salary of €694,000 and a bonus of €617,000. His career in banking began in 1976 when he joined AIB, before moving on to Irish Life in 1980 as a certified accountant.
He has held a variety of senior management positions in the group. He was appointed chief executive of Irish Life's retail business in 1999, which he held until July 2005 when he became chief executive of the banking operation, Permanent TSB.
He succeeded Irish Timeschairman David Went as group chief executive of Irish Life & Permanent just at the point when the group was beginning to feel the effects of the slowdown in the housing market.
He is married with three children and lives in Castleknock, Dublin. He is a former chairman of Financial Services Ireland and a past president of the Insurance Institute of Ireland.
Casey said on RTÉ radio yesterday morning that the Government guarantee would bring stability to the Irish financial system.
Chairwoman: Gillian Bowler
Best known as the founder of Budget Travel, Gillian Bowler (55) became the first woman to chair an Irish plc when she was appointed chairwoman of Irish Life & Permanent in 2004.
She became the face of cheap sun holidays after she set up the Budget Travel agency in 1975 and wears sunglasses on her head as her trademark.
She is estimated to have made €10 million from the staged sale of Budget Travel to Granada and later the Thomson group. At the end of 1999, Bowler and her husband Harry Sydner cut their ties with Budget Travel and she became keenly sought after as a corporate director.
Until recently, she was chairwoman of the tourism body Fáilte Ireland and she remains a non-executive director of the building materials and DIY group Grafton. Bowler's first taste for business came when she organised dances on the Isle of Wight when she was working in local council offices there as a teenager.
She moved to London and worked for Greek Island Holidays before importing its cheap travel culture back to Ireland. Bowler was paid €300,000 for her services as chairwoman in 2007.
EBS
Chief executive: Fergus Murphy
Appointed to the top job in EBS Building Society in January of this year, Fergus Murphy (44) is a career banker, specialising in wholesale and international banking. He started his career in Irish Intercontinental Bank (IIB) and later spent five years as a derivatives trader with the French bank BNP.
A senior executive with Rabobank for 13 years, Murphy moved to Singapore in 2004. He returned to Ireland last year to become chief executive of ACC Bank, which is owned by Rabobank.
In 2007, he briefly joined Shelbourne Developments, the property firm owned by his friend Garrett Kelleher that is behind the plans for the ambitious Chicago Spire skyscraper in the US. He resigned after only a month for personal reasons and then took the reins at EBS, succeeding Ted McGovern.
The job comes with a remuneration package of about €760,000 a year. He lives in Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, and is married with three children.
EBS, one of the two remaining mutual societies in the Republic, made profits of €66.6 million in 2007, just 1 per cent higher than a year earlier, as it took a hit of €15 million on bad debts owed by Dublin solicitor Thomas Byrne and his clients.
Chairman: Mark Moran
Mark Moran (46) is a former chairman and chief executive of Mater Private Hospital, having held senior management positions in both the pharmaceutical and financial services sectors.
Moran became chairman of EBS in 2007, having been appointed a non-executive director five years earlier. He also sits on the board of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service and is a director of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce.
He was a known opponent of Eithne Tinney, the independent EBS director who lost and then regained her position on the board after criticising the €1.9 million payoff given to departing chief executive Ted McGovern. The affair became an embarrassingly public falling-out at the upper echelons of EBS.
Born in Edenderry, Co Offaly, Moran was educated at Rockwell College in Tipperary and later studied chemical engineering in UCD. He joined Smith Kline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline) in Cork after graduation.
He became chief executive of the Mater private in 1997, where he oversaw heavy investment in diagnostic technology. Moran, who lives in Dublin, played minor football for Offaly and captained the Irish bridge team to victory in 2000 and 2005.
Irish Nationwide
Chief executive: Michael Fingleton
Michael Fingleton stepped down as a director of Irish Nationwide when he turned 70 in January, but remains actively involved in the society as chief executive. The native of Roscommon, who now lives in Shankill, Co Dublin, was educated at St Nathy's College in Ballaghaderreen, Co Mayo, before attending UCD and Kings Inns.
He was called to the bar in 1975, at which time his classmates included former tánaiste Dick Spring, former minister for justice Michael McDowell and Supreme Court Justice Adrian Hardiman. Mr Fingleton is known in some circles for his approachable manner and gregarious personality. However, in business, he is renowned as being extremely determined and for having a formidable intellect and a shrewd legal and financial brain.
As a lender to many of the major movers involved in the property boom, Mr Fingleton has often been cited as one of the primary architects of the Celtic Tiger economy. Mr Fingleton received a 26 per cent pay rise in 2007, earning €2.313 million - €477,000 more than in 2006 - on the back of a 64 per cent increase in pretax profits to €391 million at the building society last year.
His salary rose to €812,000 in 2007 from €738,000, while his bonus increased by more than one-third to €1.4 million from €1 million, according to the society's 2007 annual report. His pay has more than doubled since 2004.
Chairman: Dr Michael Walsh
Dr Michael Walsh is the chairman of Irish Nationwide Building Society and a director of number of other companies.
He received bachelor of commerce and master of business studies degrees from UCD before studying in the US where he was awarded MBA and PhD degrees from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
He lives in Dublin 4 and turns 57 today. Dr Walsh is an executive director of International Investment and Underwriting (IIU), a private equity firm owned by his close associate Dermot Desmond. IIU is based in the International Financial Services Centre in Dublin.
Since 1994, he has been involved in business and management consultancy activities with IIU, in addition to financial intermediation and observing management activities of holding companies.
In the Irish Nationwide report for last year, Dr Walsh is recorded as receiving remuneration of €100,430 as a non-executive director, compared to €91,300 in 2006.