Allied Irish Banks must be hoping it can draw a veil over the Rusnak affair. The US regulatory authorities have now passed verdict on the debacle which cost the bank €760 million and on balance it was as good an outcome as AIB could have hoped for. Critically, the US Federal Reserve Bank stopped short of punitive action and chose instead to make public the terms of the remedial action it wants the bank to take.
If the US authorities had resorted to some of the more serious sanctions in its armory - such as heavy fines - then the pressure for senior heads to roll at AIB would have resurfaced.
Paradoxically the AIB chairman, Mr Lochlann Quinn, and the chief executive, Mr Michael Buckley, can actually claim some brownie points from the outcome. The alacrity with which they moved once they became aware of the fraud at Allfirst was a significant factor taken into account by the Federal Reserve. All the same it is more than a little humiliating for the bank to treated like an errant child who must now publicly make amends. But AIB will be lucky if that is the end of the matter. The bank faces two law suits in the US from investors who lost money as a result of the fall in the banks share price. In addition the Federal Bureau of Investigations and other US law enforcement agencies are still looking at whether or not any Federal or state laws were violated. Mr Rusnak has not yet been charged with anything , but if he is the bank can expect - at a minimum - further embarrassment.
The discomfort that the two men and their colleagues must be feeling was elegantly counterpointed by the publication last week of a robust set of results from Bank of Ireland. In addition to pre-tax profits of €1.12 billion , AIB's rival also announced that it was expanding in the US with the acquisition of a fund management company. Mr Michael Soden, the chief executive of Bank of Ireland, has made it clear that he would like to bring about a merger of the two banks. AIB has set its face against any such move which it considers to be opportunistic. But the ability of AIB's management to resist Mr Soden's overtures would have been fatally weakened had the Federal Reserve imposed large punitive fines.