AIB Investors OK Bailout, Pelt Leaders With Eggs

SHAWN POGATCHNIK

DUBLIN (AP) — Investors in debt-hit Allied Irish Banks voted Wednesday to approve a euro3.5 billion ($4.75 billion) taxpayer bailout of Ireland's biggest bank at an emergency meeting — during which one livid shareholder pelted the rattled chairman with eggs.

Still sporting flecks of yolk on his jacket, AIB chairman Dermot Gleeson announced that shareholders had overwhelmingly backed the taxpayer bailout proposed by the government three months ago.

Gleeson said the aid to AIB — the biggest retail bank in Ireland with significant stakes in banks in Poland and the United States — would "provide support to the group's business, helping to preserve its viability as an independent financial institution."

The vote at AIB headquarters in Dublin followed a tense question-and-answer session between Gleeson and hundreds of shareholders, many of them in their 60s and dependent on vanishing dividend payments. As Gleeson verbally sparred with the first shareholder to speak, another stood up to denounce the chairman and the chief executive, Eugene Sheehy — and chucked an egg at each.

"I hit Gleeson. I hit the microphone and it sprayed over him. Unfortunately I missed Eugene Sheehy," said the jubilant assailant, 66-year-old Gary Keogh, after security officers had expelled him from the extraordinary general meeting.