Bank of Ireland plans to close its three US offices by the end of next year, affecting 34 jobs, following the lender’s decision last month to wind down its leveraged acquisition finance unit in that market.
It will initially shut its New York hub and Chicago office later this year, a company spokesman confirmed to The Irish Times. Its office in Stamford, Connecticut, is expected to shut next year. Most of the 34 staff are expected to take up a redundancy package.
“We have a range of supports and options in place for colleagues and we are working closely with them,” the spokesman said.
The €1.2 billion US leverage acquisition finance loan book, the subject of a spike in loan losses in recent years, is expected to run down over the next three years, managed out of Dublin.
The spokesman added: “As a leading corporate and business lender, with specialist FDI and corporate lending teams, our appetite to support customers seeking to expand into the US or establish operations in Ireland is undiminished.” These teams are based in Ireland.
Confirmation of the closures – 50 years after Bank of Ireland first opened an office in New York – come as Taoiseach Micheál Martin meets US president Donald Trump and vice-president JD Vance on Tuesday in Washington to mark St Patrick’s Day, armed with a message highlighting the two-way nature of transatlantic investment.
Irish companies plan to invest billions of dollars in the world’s largest economy, Enterprise Ireland said last week.
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Smurfit Westrock, the world’s largest listed packaging company which employs 32,000 staff in the US, has committed to investing $1 billion (€870 million) per annum in US over the next five years.
Insulation giant Kingspan plans to spend $1 billion over five years in the US “on rural manufacturing and brownfield site renovation”, Enterprise Ireland added.
Nutrition group Glanbia is also spending approximately $100 million this year to expand its US capacity mainly in New Mexico and Ohio.
The State agency also highlighted that food and ingredients giant Kerry Group, fuel and forecourt retailer Applegreen and CRH, the largest building materials group in North America, also have significant ongoing investment plans in the US.
Bank of Ireland set up a presence in the US in 1976 with an office in Manhattan, originally aimed at providing banking services to the Irish diaspora. It maintained a presence in the city almost continuously since then, except for a hiatus between 1997 and 2000.
The bank bought US regional lender First New Hampshire Bank in 1988 before merging the business in 1995 with Citizens Financial Group after it was hit badly by a property market slump. Citizens was owned at the time by Royal Bank of Scotland (now NatWest Group). In 1998, Bank of Ireland sold the 23.5 per cent Citizens stake it had received under the tie-up.
Bank of Ireland’s former investment management unit, Bank of Ireland Asset Management (BIAM), also once had a presence in the US to serve clients in the market. BIAM was sold to State Street in 2011.
The US leverage finance business was set up in 2002 to specialise in arranging, underwriting and distributing debt facilities for mid-market company acquisitions. However, it had been the subject of large bad loan losses in recent years.
Bank of Ireland said in its 2024 annual report that specific corporate defaults in the US acquisition finance portfolio drove a €127 million group loan loss charge that year. Defaults in this business made up a portion of €110 million of impairment losses booked in its non-property small and medium enterprise (SME) and corporate loan portfolio in 2025, according to its latest annual report.