ALLIED IRISH Banks (AIB) has lost close to 30 senior managers this week as long-serving employees departed in advance of yesterday’s Budget, fearing tax changes on lump sum payments taken on early retirement.

A number of the departing senior managers may also have been prompted to leave in advance of planned changes to be introduced across the bank in the coming months under AIB’s new managing director, Colm Doherty.

The managers had spent much of their careers with the bank and were approaching retirement age.

The bank had no comment to make on the matter.

Mr Doherty, the former head of the bank’s capital markets division, hinted at future job cuts at the bank as part of his “1,000-day plan” to rebuild AIB in an e-mail circulated to staff last week.

The departures of less than 30 senior managers at the bank come as the former head of the bank’s Republic of Ireland division, Donal Forde, has left the group.

Mr Forde moved from his job as managing director of AIB Republic of Ireland, a post he was appointed to in 2002, to a new role as director of group strategy seven months ago. He also stepped down from the board of the bank at that time after the Republic of Ireland division posted a loss after writing down €1.3 billion of its loan book.

It is understood Mr Forde has to take a period of gardening leave until mid-2010 when he turns 50, preventing him from taking up employment with any rival of the financial institution.

Mr Forde’s departure follows the decision of another senior executive to retire last week. Steve Meadows, the chief operations officer will leave the bank as soon as his successor is appointed.

A US citizen, 55-year-old Mr Meadows joined AIB in June 2005 from Citibank in London and has left the bank to allow his successor to see through the bank’s restructuring plan under Mr Doherty.

AIB has said it will appoint external candidates to the roles of finance director and chief risk officer following the decision to appoint internal candidates Colm Doherty as managing director and the bank’s chairman Dan O’Connor as executive chairman.

The appointments of Mr Doherty as managing director and Mr O’Connor to his enhanced role was a compromise reached with the Government, a 25 per cent indirect shareholder in the bank, which wanted an external candidate to become chief executive.

The post of chief executive, which was held by Eugene Sheehy until his retirement on November 30th, remains vacant, while the day-to-day running of the bank has fallen to Mr Doherty in his role.

Separately, there have been a number of further departures at the State-owned Anglo Irish Bank following the decisions of the bank’s head of Irish lending, Pat Whelan, and director of finance Matt Moran, who was previously chief financial officer, to resign.

Owen O’Neill and Joe McWilliams, senior relationship managers who directly supervised loans to some of the bank’s biggest property developer and builder customers, have announced their intentions to leave the bank.

The two bankers held the internal titles of director but were not members of the bank’s board.

There were about 30 senior managers who held the title of “director” within the bank.

Anglo recently told employees that it may not be able to accommodate all applicants to the bank’s redundancy programme, under which management are seeking to cut 230 jobs initially, including 110 across the bank’s Irish operations.

The bank had previously signalled that it would be able to approve any employees who sought to take voluntary redundancy under the programme.

The plan remains open until January 15th.