Ireland eyes new big player to boost banking sector

DUBLIN, Mar 2 (Reuters): Ireland would like a "significant" new bank with a big balance sheet to enter its lending market this year to drive competition in the diminished sector, finance minister Michael Noonan said on Saturday.
Ireland's banking crisis, which helped push the country into an European Union-International Monetary Fund bailout that it completed last year, led to the closure or merger of half of the country's domestic banks and the exit of a slew of foreign lenders. It has also left the country with only three SME lenders of scale, state-owned Allied Irish Banks (ALBK.I), Royal Bank of Scotland's (RBS.L) Ulster Bank and Bank of Ireland (BKIR.I), which counts the Irish state as a 14 percent shareholder.