CERTUS, the company taking over the management of the €32bn loan book of Bank of Scotland Ireland (BOSI), plans to hire up to 25 senior bank executives to help it run down the bank.

The company, which is controlled by senior management from BOSI, is also looking at taking on servicing the loan books of other institutions.

The rebranding of the former BOSI offices under the Certus brand will begin in the new year. Certus will retain the existing BOSI workforce of about 800. The relationship executives' roles will be within the wholesale division of Certus, it said. The new jobs will be in its Dublin offices.

As the Sunday Tribune revealed in August, BOSI's parent, UK lender Lloyds Banking Group, announced that it was pulling the plug on its banking operation in Ireland by effectively shutting BOSI. The bank had already closed its retail banking network Halifax earlier this year with the loss of 750 jobs.

BOSI chief executive Joe Higgins and other senior executives from the Irish end of the bank formed Certus to run down the €32bn loan portfolio.

While the new executives will initially be required to work on the BOSI book, Certus is not precluded by Lloyds from taking on the servicing of other loan portfolios. With several foreign and Irish lenders shrinking, there may be opportunities for Certus to take over a number of loan books in the coming months.

Lloyds had seen BOSI run up massive losses after it ramped up its exposure to the Irish property market at the height of the boom. As disclosed by the Sunday Tribune, 90% of its loans to property developers were impaired. The UK bank was forced to pump €4.5bn into the Irish division over the last two years to staunch the losses and loan impairments. BOSI lost around €3bn in 2009, according to its most recent results, and continued to lose money in 2010. Lloyds said following a review of the Irish operation "there was little opportunity for scalable growth".