Insiders insist a deal to sell Davy Stockbrokers is still weeks away with frontrunner Bank of Ireland yet to fully lock down an agreement.

The Business Post reported at the weekend that Bank of Ireland, Davy’s former owner, is close to agreeing a €400m deal.

A number of alternative bids backed by private equity firms are understood to have either fallen by the wayside or drifted out of contention. 

Allowing for €65m on the stockbroker’s balance sheet, the Bank of Ireland price is close to a previously reported top-end valuation of €475m.

That suggests fall-out from the Central Bank’s high-profile fine and reprimand of Davy over a 2014 bond dealing scandal did nothing to dent the valuation of the firm even though it triggered the sale. 

It is well above the €316m Bank of Ireland sold Davy for to management in 2006, at close to the height of the Celtic Tiger. It is well in excess of the €138m AIB is paying for Davy’s next biggest rival Goodbody. 

The price puts a valuation of around €60m on the 13pc stake of Davy’s biggest shareholder, former CEO Brian McKiernan, who stood down as a result of the scandal and is one of a number of former executives being sued by businessman Patrick Kearney, the former Davy customer whose treatment by the broker sparked the Central Bank investigation. 

Other former Davy executives who stood down from executive or board roles as a result of the bond trading scandal have shareholdings that put them in line for a significant share of the net proceeds of a sale, including Kyran McLoughlin, Tony Garry and Barry Nangle,

The Davy deal is just one part of a three-handed set of transactions revolving around Bank of Ireland.

The bank is in talks with KBC to buy the Belgian lender’s €9bn of performing Irish mortgages.  

At the same time, the Government last month confirmed plans to sell its remaining shares in Bank of Ireland over the next six months.

The State currently holds 13.9pc of the bank’s shares, valued at around €670m at the time the deal was announced. 

The stake will be sold into the market in a managed sell-down, not as a single holding, at a price the Department of Finance says has been determined but not communicated to potential buyers.