AIB's M&T Bank in the US has been identified by influential American television network CNBC as one of 20 stocks in the US most likely to suffer a significant stockmarket slide. The risk of a share slide in M&T, the New York state and Pennsylvania bank in which AIB owns a 22.6% stake, could threaten AIB's plan of selling out of the US bank at the bottom of the market.

AIB will want to use the proceeds of the sale of the M&T stake, worth €1.2bn last Friday, to help plug a drop in its key capital requirements when it sells its discounted commercial property loans to Nama.

Senior AIB management last week pitched a long-standing plan to government, backed by internal chief-executive candidate and head of the bank's capital markets division Colm Doherty, that envisages AIB boosting its capital by €600m after it sells off M&T.

The government, which has already injected €3.5bn into AIB, also wants to limit the amount of additional public funds, probably through the National Pension Reserve Fund, that it will need to invest in AIB.

However, the wisdom of selling an asset, like M&T, at the bottom of the market will now come under increasing scrutiny.

Citing Wall Street consensus forecasts, CNBC said its survey of the most vulnerable American stocks was based on a consensus of analysts' forecasts.

"After dissecting the data, analysts following a particular stock produce a price target of where they believe the stock is headed," CNBC said. Out of the entire S&P 500, M&T Bank, along with Caterpillar, Whirlpool, Harley-Davidson, Eastman Kodak and retailer Sears, were among a group of 20 stocks most vulnerable to a price fall, CNBC said.

The Wall Street consensus forecast suggests that M&T shares could drop by 16%.

AIB has long identified the potential sale of its M&T stake, which received $600m from the US Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp). After paying the Tarp payments, M&T reported a net profit of $114m (€75.8m) for the third quarter to the end of September.

That suggests AIB will receive €17.13m from its M&T shareholding for the quarter.