Former NIE head joins Bank of Ireland board

Bank of Ireland has avoided outright nationalisation in the wake of Ireland's economic crisis.

The former Chief Executive of NIE has been appointed to the board of Bank of Ireland as a non-executive director.

Sir Patrick Haren will sit on the audit and remuneration committees.

A graduate of Queen's University in Belfast, he worked for the Electricity Supply Board in Dublin before joining Northern Ireland Electricity (NIE) as Chief Executive in 1992.

He took the company through privatisation and then became Group Chief Executive of the Viridian Group.

He left that post in 2007.

Bank of Ireland is the only Dublin-based bank which has avoided outright nationalisation in the wake of Ireland's economic crisis.

Sir Patrick will be joined on the board by another new director, Kent Atkinson, who was group finance director of Lloyds TSB Group in the UK between 1994 and 2002.