Bank of Ireland

In 1984, I joined the staff of First NH White Mountain National Bank and four years later became an employee of the Bank of Ireland as a result of their purchase of First NH Banks. Executives from the Bank of Ireland visited their first US acquisition regularly and we met Mark Hely-Hutchinson, Chief Executive and former Guiness executive and Frank O'Rourke, Deputy Chief Executive when they visited our office in North Conway, NH. One of my more embarassing moments occurred after coordinating an all-day realtor appreciation day at Attitash Ski Area and attending a management team welcome dinner in the evening for Frank O'Rourke. Exhausted after a day of making arrangements and skiing, I started dozing off seated next to Mr. O'Rourke after dinner. Taking notice of my lapse in judgment, our affiliate president, Mike Kirk, came around to my side away from our guest and assured me in no uncertain terms that I did not want to be falling asleep at that point in my banking career.Visiting Dublin 20 years later gave me the opportunity to visit the 'Main Office' for the first time. Beth and I entered from Westmoreland/College Street and followed the maze of corridors to the main entry. The building was originally built to house the Irish Parliament, opening in the 1730s, and became a Bank of Ireland property after 1800. We were granted entry into the House of Lords chambers, which have been preserved in more or less their original state. I introduced myself to a current employee and inquired as to the Bank's business standing, getting little positive feedback. Considering the price of it's stock has fallen roughly 95% since early 2007 and they're suffering from many of the same lending tactics that have crippled American banks, the response was not surprising. They seemed to be waiting for the ax to fall at any moment.


Ireland in recent years has been known as the Celtic Tiger for the dramatic upswing in its economy but the past year and a half has dulled the shine on the progress there. Still, I remember hearing of 18% unemployment on the Emerald Isle in 1988, and with many infrastructure improvements evident throughout our visit, present-day Ireland seems well ahead of 20 years ago in spite of the recent downturn.

The Bank of Ireland, 2 College Green, Dublin.

Ireland-bound

Growing up just short of the Adirondack foothills in the rural Upstate New York town of Galway, meant spending alot of time in the dairy farming land that surrounded our village home. I enjoyed haying with neighbors, eating wild red raspberries and sledding in the winter. Still I was always alert to the mention of faraway places. One, naturally, was Galway, Ireland.

Galway NY was settled in 1792 by Scottish farmers as New Galloway, and the story goes that, when the town was incorporated in 1838, an Irish clerk in the Saratoga County Registry mis-spelled the name of the new town, and it stood.

Attending Joseph Henry Elementary Elementary School (named for the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution) in the early 1960s, I did a social studies report in Mr. Rowland's 6th grade class that combined information about Galway NY and Galway Ireland. Other than the name, the two towns had little in common but that didn't deter me. Mr. Rowland overlooked the lack of commonality and rewarded my hard work with a good grade.

Later in life I had my next brush with Ireland when my employer, First NH Banks, was the first banking company outside of Ireland to be purchased by the Bank of Ireland. The year was 1988 and they bought at the top of the market. Soon streams of BOI executives toured all over New Hampshire, even our office in North Conway, to visit their new investment. They included Chief Executive Mark Hely-Hutchinson, a Brit who previously chaired Guiness, and Deputy Chief Executive Frank O'Rourke, an Irishman, but born in Chicago. BOI was optimistic that with 18% unemployment at home, their path to growth was overseas. By the time I left the company in 1991, due to the inevitable consolidation of bank-wide departments, the Irish were regretting their purchase. It took many years for them to recoup their intial losses and sell their share of Citizen's Bank at a profit.

Now the "Celtic Tiger" is at a slight downturn mirroring the world economy, but coming off an extended period of growth that coincided with its menbership in the European Union and lowered the unemployment rate to 3.5%.

Fast-forward to September 2008: youngest son Jacob, a senior majoring in Political Science at Northeastern University, leaves for a semester-long program with the Institute of Public Administration in Dublin. Jacob is taking courses in Irish Literature and History and interning in the Dail (Irish Parliament) with Timmy Dooley, a member of the ruling Fianna Fail Party from County Clare.

Beth and I are headed to Ireland for the Thanksgiving Holiday to see Jacob and a 4-day motor-tour of the country, including Dublin, Belfast, Cavan, Galway, Limerick and as many more sights as we can see. Beth wants to see the Cliffs of Moher and my old First NH White Mountain Bank boss, Mike Kirk, recommended driving the Ring of Kerry, so we'll have to move fast to see all we want to see in 5 days.

To be continued.....