This just passed the bogus “Stress Test”. Plus, it has basically been guaranteed survival due to its favored status in the Irish Government. I know we are crazy for buying this but I view it as a lottery ticket. Won’t really care if its worthless, but I bet it’s not…
We own at 2.25 and it has been bouncing around in the low-to-mid two dollar area. It can easily get to the 4 area…
i think IRE has a bit of a “more-favored” status with the irish gov’t. The irish bank-czar, whatever the actual title is, had some relatively favorable things to say about IRE after their own personal “stress test” awhile back.
That was relatively unintelligible. When Ireland was setting up its national bad bank, buying loans at below par value and taking them onto the state balance sheet and so forth, a minister of something or other, honestly, said straight out “at least Ireland will have one bank with a solid presence in the capital markets”, about IRE.
I fully agree with your concept, and there are probably numerous multi-baggers to be had among european banks right now… But with my money I have bought small positions (not at the bottom) in both IRE and AIB leaning slightly towards IRE.
Sometime this weekend hopefully I can find time to dig through the stress test data and most recent financials and come up with a small list of deep value eurobanks. I think AIB shareholders may still be due a significant dose of dilution, not per the broad eurozone stress tests, but per Irish orders.
I mean my first post was relatively unintelligible, not your blog, which was great