DUBLIN (Reuters) – Allied Irish Banks (AIB) plans to return 213 million euros ($236 million) to shareholders, including a 91 million euro directed buyback, it said on Thursday after reporting significant profit recovery last year.
The Irish lender swung to a full-year pretax profit of 629 million euros from a 930 million euro loss in 2020, when it set aside almost 1.5 billion euros to cover possible loan defaults owing to COVID-19 disruption.
It wrote back 238 million euros of those provisions, helping to push profit towards the 1.1 billion euro pre-exceptional pretax profit it made in 2019, before the pandemic struck.
The government announced in December that it plans to reduce its 71% stake in the bank over the coming months and AIB’s finance chief told Reuters the bank’s preference is to deal with the state on the buyback and that discussions are ongoing.
($1 = 0.9017 euros)
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by David Goodman)
