Irish Free State business of the Belfast Banking Company, which in turn bought the Northern Ireland business of the Royal Bank. 1985 ICI collapse The Can of Worms at ICI was the headline in Business & Finance magazine on 8 November 1984. The Insurance Corporation of Ireland (ICI) was a wholly owned subsidiary of AIB when it collapsed in 1985 with losses of over IR£200 million. When it was discovered in November 1984 that ICI was operating below the statutory reserve ratio, a request for further capital was made to AIB — ICI had returned a profit of more than £80 million the previous year. This collapse occurred at a time of deep economic recession in Ireland. The level of Government debt at that time was 116% of GDP. But the Irish taxpayer bailed ICI out of its difficulties. The Irish Government did so to ensure a continuation of the insurance business and to protect policyholders. AIB claimed that it could not resolve the problems of ICI without putting its core banking business in jeopardy. The investment of £85 million by AIB in ICI was written off and the cost to the Irish taxpayer was £400 million. On 9 September 2010 AIB reached agreement to sell a 66% stake in BZ-WBK to Santander for €3.1 billion, the balance of the shares to be sold on the open market. Any purchase over 66% would have forced Santander to make an offer to buy the entire company. Recent history Between 1999 and 2001 AIB had an interest in Keppel TatLee Bank in Singapore, but withdrew after Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) acquired it. After suffering large losses due to the activities of rogue trader John Rusnak at Allfirst (see below) in April 2003, AIB completed a deal merging Allfirst with M&T Bank Corporation, which is headquartered in Buffalo, New York. In November 2010, AIB sold its 22.5% stake (26.7 million shares) in M&T. The shares were sold at US$77.50 per share and generated $2.1 billion. The sale was part of AIB's effort to raise capital amidst the ongoing financial crisis in Ireland. AIB maintains representative offices in the United States in Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and White Plains. At the beginning of 2008 AIB entered the Latvian, Estonian and Lithuanian markets by acquiring the AmCredit mortgage finance business from the Baltic American Enterprise Fund. Now AIB operates as a branch of this