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Details
aka: Ian Bankier
Position: Celtic Chairman
Started: 2011
Ended: January 2023
Biog
It’s hard to think of another Celtic chairman since the McCann takeover who has done as little whilst at the helm and has had so poor a relationship with the general support. Only Kevin Kelly comes into the same bracket but he was a remnant of the old board from before McCann.
Being the Chairman at a football club can be a thankless task however it can also end up being an almost ceremonial role with the incumbent little better than a golf committee member sitting smugly in a school boy blazer. Ian Bankier sadly falls into that cliché and even the most sympathetic would struggle to come up with anything of major note he achieved in his time at Celtic. He possibly thought this would be an easy job and all he had to do was not rock the boat.
When the Chief Executive is the one nowadays most often at the controls, a chairman should at least be a counter weight. Bankier on the other hand was ineffective and dormant. When Celtic were pushing towards further cementing their domestic hegemony achieving the incredible quadruple treble, he was mostly seen or heard only at flag days and the pre-scripted AGMs.
When the challenge for ten in a row under the ineffective Neil Lennon floundered, he had a chance to finally show his strength by engineering change, but stuck his head in the sand and allowed Lennon to carry on in the role when there were umpteen valid opportunities previously to remove him. The season was a disaster and the first team squandered the opportunity to achieve ten league titles in a row to make history. It doesn’t undermine all the previous achievements but can’t be ignored either. What it did show was a lack of leadership by Bankier who remained quiet despite the rising tensions between the supporters and the board. If anything the on field success had masked the multitude of problems at board level.
The one disturbing episode that will forever mark him down though was the stramash over the proposed appointment of Bernard Higgins as head of security management at Celtic. Little ever before has there ever been as much of a united effort across the Celtic support against any proposal, with thankfully the appointment not finalised. It was a complete humiliation for the entire Celtic administration.
A shambles of a situation that alienated the core of the support, and clearly showed his lack of nous. A poor statement in answer to questions at an AGM to the issue overshadowed everything else on the day. He even got roundly booed, and those who didn’t simply groaned at him. At a club like Celtic, the chairman must be able to at least try to work with the support but he clearly was too distant. He was out of his depth and had too long overstayed his welcome. A cynic would say he was a convenient shield for others at Celtic (and it worked).
Additionally there was the shambles over the appointment of the successor chief executive which saw Dominic McKay hired and then cut before he had even had the chance to call in the office decorators.
There were reports also of a lack of knowledge of the history of the club which is a problem when you purport to be a fan in a coveted role, and have to speak at supporters events as the figurehead. If anything it appeared to many that his appointment was cronyism at its worst. At the other end it also proved that at Celtic there was a serious issue with accountability and due process for change. Sadly something that was increasingly the case everywhere in the UK business and political world.
There has always been criticisms of previous chairmen (as is the norm at any club), but you could at least pinpoint one or two achievements off field for which they deserve. Not necessarily Bankier, although there was some off field developments of note like The Celtic Way etc. However all development seemed to be on hold such as facility improvements, and everything else was just long term plans to be like the hotel and museum which all seemed to go all dormant.
He had a few front and back page moments for the tabloids, criticising the referrees and SFA, but really his attacks were anodyne for his targets. All real offensives were taken up by his more effective Chief Exec counterpart.
It would be churlish to disregard the on field achievements but few could argue it was anything he could take much credit for. More that he was fortunate to be at the helm when the new golden era began and Rangers died, as well as that the experienced and generally savvy Peter Lawell was the club chief exec. It is mostly true that his longevity can be attributed to the good fortune gifted to him in the era he precided.
His departure in January 2022 will be little mourned and in truth, future Celtic retrospectives will likely little reference him which will be the harshest point for him & any sympathisers to take.
Articles
Image for Celtic’s Ian Bankier: The Man Who Isn’t There, Who We Wish Would Go Away.
Antigonish is a poem about a ghost.
That hasn’t stopped it being used against various people from politics and other walks of life ever since it was published; the important lines are the ones I’m sure you’ve all heard a million times before.
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there!
He wasn’t there again today,
Oh how I wish he’d go away!
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Our chairman is “the man who isn’t there.”
He does nothing. He contributes nothing. He keeps a lower profile than a man on the run.
Whenever the papers talk about the decision making process at Celtic they mention the largest shareholder and the chief executive; it’s as if the role of Celtic chairman is an emeritus position instead of one that should carry real weight.
For all that, I do wish he’d go away, and most Celtic fans do.
We just don’t get particularly animated about it, because, frankly, he’s just not worth it.
His name, in case you’ve forgotten it, is Ian Bankier.
If you know what he actually does in that role, then you know more than I do.
He chairs meetings. So what?
Do you remember the Only Fools episode when Rodney becomes chair of the housing committee? I’ve been a Labour branch chair; opening and closing meetings and deciding the order of the speakers isn’t a huge deal.
One of the things I’ve found most fascinating about the last few months is that even amidst all the fury directed at the Celtic board, Ian Bankier’s name was never mentioned.
Where was it on those banners which were hung outside Celtic Park?
My favourite was the one with the faces of the three “guilty men” on it; Lawwell, Desmond and Lennon.
It wasn’t as if fans were saying that the chairman of the board wasn’t responsible for any of what went wrong … it was that they know his role at the club is so minor and so insignificant that, really, who cares whether he stays or goes?
He wields no influence, he has no power, he’s basically a figurehead, so who gives a toss whether he’s there or not?
We all should, actually.
I can’t think of a bigger indictment of this guy than to say that he’s so useless that the whole upper echelon of the club could be swept away except for him and that no-one might realise he was still in post for months.
But if you believe, as I do, in the old Chinese adage that “a fish rots from the head down” then you have to look at this guy with a more critical eye.
Bankier didn’t exactly start his tenure as chairman successfully.
Everything about this guy reeks of weakness, and his public relations skills are strictly amatuer hour.
At the AGM at which Bankier was presented as chairman, Phil Mac Giolla Bhain attempted to quiz him on his alleged “Celtic background.”
In spite of a vain attempt by the club’s PR people to keep him out of the press conference, Phil was there that day.
Sitting beside Hugh Keevins, who was there representing Clyde, and just behind Raman Bhardwaj of STV, Phil had come prepared, having done his homework on Bankier.
He knew that Bankier was not only not a Celtic fan, but he had no love for football as a sport either. Indeed, Phil’s deep dive into his background revealed him to be a rugby fan.
Still, Celtic tried to present him at the AGM as a “lifelong Celtic supporter.”
Phil asked him the two questions you and I would ask the fans of every single club;
“What was your first Celtic game?” and “Who was your first Celtic hero?”
Not complicated. Easy stuff. Every fan, of every club, can answer those without much thought. Even if they are hazy on the exact details of the first game, they can tell you, in an instant, about the first one they do remember.
But Bankier had no idea how to answer those modest inquiries.
He stumbled and stammered through an attempted answer, but it was clear that he had no idea what he was talking about and couldn’t muster a coherent response.
As part of his attempted answer, he actually blundered on about which Catholic school he had attended, as well as recounting a ridiculous anecdote about how his maths teacher had been a Celtic fan.
The story he chose to highlight, and the hilarious – for all the wrong reasons – player he claimed had been one of his math’s teacher’s early heroes was Frank Haffey … who as most Celtic fans know was not exactly the club’s Fraser Forster of the era.
It’s the dishonesty that amazes you.
A Celtic chairman does not have to be steeped in the history of our club, so there was no need at all for the charade.
Bankier has only made headlines a handful of times as chairman, and to be frank very few of them have been for reasons that endear him to those of us who actually are Celtic fans.
I wrote on this blog, in 2018, that when a section of our support was outraged at him for attending a Downing Street dinner with Theresa May that it was far better to have a guy like that at the helm than one who’s Wikipedia page included the words “originally indicted on 322 counts including fraud, tax evasion and evasion of exchange control regulations, as well as money-laundering and racketeering.”
I stand by that; I didn’t care who he had his dinner with.
But over time, as Celtic’s corporate proclivities have become plainer and more obvious I can see that his attendance that night was part of a continuum. In the piece I wrote about Brian Wilson, I covered some of the other members of the Celtic board and their involvement in the 2014 independence referendum, on the No side.
What I didn’t know until someone sent me the information is that Bankier himself was involved on the No side.
I wasn’t surprised; it confirms what I wrote about this being a unionist board.
Bankier’s sins are worse than that though; the last three times he’s been in the papers addressing fans directly was to have a go at them.
At the AGM recently, he had a go at the supporters for the criticisms of Neil Lennon.
In 2018 he said Celtic fans had “dragged the club into the gutter” over allegations that there had been some rather uncomplimentary chants directed at Steven Gerrard and Craig Levein.
The most egregious example of his coming after our supporters – who he has never defended, and nor has he ever uttered a single word in defence of our players or staff when they’ve been abused – was when he accused fans of being “anti-Semites” after lots of us suggested that Ian Livingston should no longer be on the board of directors after casting a vote in the Lords in favour of austerity.
They are, far and away, the most scandalous comments I have ever heard uttered by a Celtic official and directed at our own fans.
Livingston was being slammed for acting in a way that was grossly out of step with the charitable ethos of our club; no Celtic fan that I knew was aware of his religion and I can safely say that none would have cared if they did.
To smear our fans in that way was an outrage that led to the blogs nearly unanimously demanding his resignation; a worthless “clarification” followed which appeased exactly nobody.
The anger over it is still fresh, although it was ages ago.
Every time I mention Bankier in a piece I get responses about that affair.
Nobody has either forgotten or forgiven him for it.
There is little doubt that this was going to be Bankier’s legacy when he departed.
This is what he would have been remembered for; in truth, it is virtually all he would have been remembered for.
The more I recognise that legacy doesn’t matter to anyone at Celtic Park – Lawwell, in particular, has surprised me in this regard – the more I realise that holding these people to account via the historical verdict is simply not going to be enough.
Shaming those who have no shame is a doomed strategy.
These people have to be confronted by their failures and what they mean in the here and now, and if that leads to people not renewing season tickets, if it means empty spaces in the stands, if it means closing the upper tiers of the ground again, then that’s what must be done … these people cannot think that it is only the history books which will judge them.
Bankier is not the worst Celtic chairman ever. He is certainly not the best. He might well be the weakest. He is certainly the most useless, the most anonymous, and his behaviour whilst in post the most offensive to ordinary fans.
Most of us might forget from time to time who he is and the characterisation of him as Celtic’s “man who wasn’t there” is right on the nose.
That doesn’t mean we should allow him to stay in his role.
When his CEO packs his desk this guy ought to follow him.
His glad-handing pals at the AGM might have given him support for another year, but fans may yet have the final say on that, and we should be looking to.
Ian Bankier handed brutal Celtic fan group evaluation as ‘out of touch’ chairman put in the firing line
Mark Pirie – 28 Sept 2021
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/sport/football/ian-bankier-handed-brutal-celtic-fan-group-evaluation-as-out-of-touch-chairman-put-in-the-firing-line/ar-AAOUUXD
The Celtic Trust have branded chairman Iain Bankier “out of touch” as they blasted the Parkhead supremo.
Bankier spoke out following a pre-tax loss of £11.5million for the financial year as the club cited the pandemic and a drop in player trading as key factors behind their loss.
Following a disastrous campaign last term, the quick-fire departure of chief executive Dominic McKay and the slow start under Ange Postecoglou the influential fan group have turned their attention to the club mainstay.
In a statement sent to supporters titled “Trust reacts furiously to out of touch Bankier” the chairman was put in the limelight.
In comments made following the annual results, Bankier insisted Celtic “is in good hands” sparking a fuming response from the group.
The Trust also took umbrage with finishing second to Rangers in the Premiership being listed as an “operational highlight” on the club website alongside Bankier’s message.
The Trust statement read: “The chairman’s last words; ‘Celtic is in good hands’. We at the Celtic Trust beg to differ.
“There are some interesting statements and the usual references peppered throughout the supporting narrative; operational highlights led with ‘Runners Up in the Scottish Premiership ’ which raises a smile.
“The fact is the year was a disastrous one for Celtic and there were no positive operational highlights to speak of.
“We won no trophies or tournaments. The chairman believes the club is directed by individuals with demonstrable experience and supported by a dedicated cast of colleagues and he thanks them all.
“No mention of bad management decisions or praise for the supporters who financially supported the club when they needed it most.
“He also believes Covid-19 disrupted our winning rhythm and he looks forward to this current season with optimism. Time will tell.”
Ian Bankier’s unremarkable Celtic legacy – Kevin McKenna
2nd August
By Kevin McKenna
@kmckenna63
https://www.celticway.co.uk/opinion/20592344.ian-bankiers-unremarkable-celtic-legacy—kevin-mckenna/
2 Comments
Celtic chairman Ian Bankier
Celtic chairman Ian Bankier
In Celtic’s history, has the club had a chairman whose tenure has been as unremarkable as Ian Bankier’s?
The news that the boutique whisky salesman is to step down from his role at Parkhead was greeted with something between supreme indifference and mild satisfaction by supporters. How can you feel strongly about anyone either way if you’re not entirely sure what they even look like let alone what they actually achieved?
Outside of the highly-specialised sector in which his firm operated, Bankier was almost completely unknown before he became Celtic chairman. He departs 11 years later with that anonymity virtually intact.
On the very few occasions he was moved to say anything that could be considered significant, you felt that he might have been better advised to maintain his verbal austerity.
At Celtic AGMs he betrayed an almost total absence of empathy for the concerns of the support while conveying an attitude that would have found favour in today’s hard-right Tory government. It certainly made you wonder if this man really did have any emotional attachment to the club he purported to support.
In 2015, both he and then chief executive Peter Lawwell deployed a series of absurd arguments to defend Celtic’s refusal to pay the national living wage to its lowest-paid staff.
Bankier simply dismissed the issue by saying “it wasn’t in Celtic’s interests” to pay these employees an extra £1 or so as it would “cost £350k a year” – probably roughly equivalent to a sponsorship deal for one of Scott Brown’s boots.
Later, Celtic agreed to pay the equivalent of the living wage but only after withdrawing an annual discretionary bonus agreement with club staff, a move which reeked of contempt. He reiterated the club’s policy of not recognising a trade union.
In his 11 years as chairman of Celtic it’s difficult to conclude anything other than that he contributed close to the square root of zero in exchange for getting to wear the club blazer, receiving a handsome annual emolument, travelling and residing in first-class luxury all over the world and occupying the best seat in the house.
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Celtic supporters are entirely aware of the inexact social contract that exists between them and the club’s custodians. This mainly rests on the ability of 11 men wearing the green and white hoops to get results on the park and win trophies at the end of the season. But they also know when their emotional attachment is being exploited and manipulated.
While Dermot Desmond remains the principal shareholder his writ will run at Parkhead with little or no opposition from a board and shareholders who can always be relied on to see off any challenge. While success is being gained on the park, the traditional policy of “what they don’t know won’t hurt them” will always be considered sufficient.
Celtic Way:
And when their actions do come under intense scrutiny – as they did in the catastrophic 2020-21 season – they could rely on Neil Lennon to deflect it. So many questions arose from the meltdown of that season that still require answering, but probably won’t be.
Who was actually sanctioning the transfers? How many players were foisted on Lennon with little or no input from him? And how many of them had connections with third-party agencies that had a larger business relationship with Celtic? How many deals for other players sanctioned by the manager were jettisoned at the last minute without his knowledge?
During a prolonged period of national crisis affecting the health and economic wellbeing of their supporters, what passes for leadership at Celtic simply hid. Their response to this was to offer a money-off token for spending in the club shop. This is when a chairman of stature, in tune with the supporters’ needs and emotions, would have emerged.
In football, a board of directors can remain impervious to such concerns so long as the team are achieving success – but this can never be guaranteed.
And how do you define success? For Celtic, is it merely about winning the domestic league? Or does it include fielding a team capable of doing the club and its history justice in the Champions League?
Perhaps there is a notion at boardroom level that reaching the knockout stages of the Europa League and entertaining realistic hopes of progressing to the last four is the extent of Celtic’s European ambitions. And that they’re really a Europa League team which sees the odd victory in the group stages of the Champions League as a rare bonus. A significant number of Celtic supporters would seem to have accepted this dimming of European ambitions too.
The problem, as with other clubs who refuse to engage significantly with their core support base, is that no-one beyond an anointed few individuals ever really know what the club’s long-term goal really is. This gap is then filled by speculation or third-hand information from a source whose friend or relative works at Parkhead or Lennoxtown.
A decent chairman, even one working within the limited scope granted by Celtic, can help bridge the gap.
No-one expects him or her to be issuing monthly supporter updates but it might help if they were to be an occasional presence in the supporters’ sightlines. And perhaps even possess the ability to ‘read the room’.
By this, I suppose I mean that they should be aware of the concerns of supporters and then be willing to engage with them. Not regarding them as ignorant trouble-makers, valued only insofar as they can continue to hand over their cash.
The position of Celtic chairman should command a significant degree of prestige in Scotland’s national life. Whoever fills it ought to be a person of substance who can inspire respect well beyond the narrow confines of football administration and the west of Scotland business community.
They should have charisma and proven leadership skills to advocate for Celtic in politics and culture. Someone who can build bridges, not dismantle them or hide under them.
It would help too if that person had some sympathy for the social circumstances of the majority of Celtic’s fans – and who didn’t appear to be embarrassed by them.
Celtic AGM: Bankier dodges Bernard Higgins question, booed in room
https://www.67hailhail.com/news/celtic-agm-bankier-dodges-bernard-higgins-question-booed-in-room/
By David Walton
8 months ago
Celtic chairman Ian Bankier has failed to give assurances that the club will reconsider the appointment of Bernard Higgins.
Celtic fans have recently been vocal and protested angrily at the rumoured appointment of the Police chief into a new senior security role at the club.
This comes after Higgins was a strong supporter of the Offensive Behaviour in Football and Threatening Communications Act, which was repealed back in 2018. The legacy of the bill has left plenty of scars and mistrust. He has in part been blamed in the past for Scotland trying to “arrest its way out of sectarianism’ [The Herald].
Celtic Ian Bankier
Photo by Alexander Hassenstein – FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images
And as the fans have tried to get his rumoured appointment halted, Bankier refused to give assurances at today’s AGM:
Speaking via Football Scotland’s live blog [12:48], Bankier said: “I’m not going to give assurances on what will be an operational matter.
“Health and safety at big arenas is a massive issue. We don’t need to recite human tragedies which have occured over the decades. It’s a big topic, high level, strategic, it’s not a role which polices Celtic fans.
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“I’m not giving assurances one way or the other. When we’re ready to announce something, we will.”
Ian Bankier lets down Celtic supporters by dodging Bernard Higgins question
This is a massive blow to the Celtic supporters, many of whom believe Higgins should be nowhere near the football club. That his appointment is a major slap in the face to the support and hypocritical at best.
There’s such widespread anger over this issue, and it’s incredible that Celtic haven’t managed to solve it before today.
Today’s AGM was always going to see the issue raised by shareholders. No surprises then that Bankier was booed loudly for failing to actually show some accountability and leadership:
Q2 about appointment of Bernard Higgins#ticagm
Cannot comment on ongoing recruitment process. (Answer booed)
H&S at big arenas is a massive issue and involves interacting with govt agencies. It is not about policing fans.
— Celtic Underground (@celticrumours) November 17, 2021
It remains to be seen what the end-game is here. The fans have made their stance on Higgins so incredibly clear. Going ahead with his senior security role at Parkhead would be a major dagger to the hearts of the club’s support.
And it doesn’t exactly reflect well on a club’s board that are consistently accused of being out of touch with its fanbase.
A massively, massively disappointing answer from the chairman here.
Ian Bankier defends his Celtic record as outgoing chairman insists remit was ‘misunderstood’
Outgoing Celtic chairman Ian Bankier has insisted the club achieved “almost all of its objectives” under his watch as he prepares to step down after almost 12 years in the role.
By Matthew Elder
https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/celtic/ian-bankier-defends-his-celtic-record-as-outgoing-chairman-insists-remit-was-misunderstood-3906135
The 70-year-old will retire at the end of the calender year, officially stepping aside on January 1, 2023, having first become a director at Celtic Park in June 2021 before being appointed chairman later that year. Bankier took part in his final Celtic AGM on Friday and in a video released on Celtic’s official Youtube channel, he claimed his remit has been “widely misunderstood” over his time at the helm.
“It’s been an extraordinary passage of my life; life-changing, probably,” he said. “Over the period of my career, I’ve been in a lot of big situations, but I don’t think I’ve been in anything quite like football and Celtic. it demands a lot, the role of the chair is widely misunderstood, my job is to stay away and stay out of the football pages.
“People don’t see anything of what I do, but what I do I have done to the very best of my ability, I’ve been a team player, I’ve worked for the club and the executives.”
Outgoing Celtic chairman Ian Bankier attends his final AGM before stepping down at the end of the calendar year. (Photo by Craig Williamson / SNS Group)
Outgoing Celtic chairman Ian Bankier attends his final AGM before stepping down at the end of the calendar year. (Photo by Craig Williamson / SNS Group)
Bankier has faced some criticism from sections of the Celtic support across his reign – most notably during the failed 10-in-a-row season, but he pointed to the club’s record of success over the past decade in his defence.
He continued: “Although it’s very hybrid and it’s very different, the fundamentals of it remain the same, you’ve got to have realistic ambition, and you’ve got to have a plan to achieve that ambition and you’ve got to stick to that plan. I think the record shows that’s what the club has done over the last twelve years. It’s had a plan, it’s stuck to it, and it’s achieved almost all of its objectives.”
The chairman also had a parting message for supporters, adding: “I guess that the last, last word from me is to recognise the supporters. “I’ve personally never encountered anything like their passion for Celtic and for everything we’re trying to do and I really wish the club and the supporters the very best going forward.”