First-e Group

[2] It launched with €200m in funding from various institutions including Intel, Morgan Stanley and Apax Partners[3] and initially targeted the British market with a savings interest rate 2% higher than its high-street competitors, and gained 250,000 customers.

[4] A 2.4 billion euro[5] merger with the Spanish online bank Uno-e was proposed 2000,[2] but after the dotcom bubble burst in late 2000, parent company of Uno-e, BBVA called off the merger was in April 2001 and instead paid some €350m in compensation.

[6] First-e then sold its business to Direkt Anlage Bank of Germany in October 2001.

[1][7] First-e was owned by the Enba group of companies, created by Gerhard Huber, Peter Phillips, Christian Kaiser, Nicholas Malcomson and Xavier Azalbert.

Its Board included Sean Donlon, a former Irish ambassador to the US and the late Sir Nicholas Redmayne who was also its chairman.