Lloyds is recruiting workout specialists in Edinburgh for its Irish portfolio

For Lloyds Banking Group, Ireland remains a problem despite the firm's decision to pull back from the country in August last year.

It has a 26.7bn Irish portfolio and took a charge of 1.1bn in the first quarter of this year to allow for further falls in commercial property prices. However, in a small way, Edinburgh is benefiting.

According to various sources, Lloyds Banking Group has been recruiting in relatively significant volumes for loan workout specialists in Edinburgh and London to work on its underwater investments in Ireland.

It's believed that there's likely to be tens of these jobs created, but Lloyds didn't return calls requesting comment.

These roles are essentially a combination of corporate banker relationship manager and restructuring, with bankers employed to leverage relationships and investment expertise to get the best out of a soured loan.

When Lloyds announced it was pulling out of Ireland with the closure of Bank of Scotland (Ireland) (BoSI) in August last year it said it would "utilise its extensive operational and management capability in the UK in relation to the Irish portfolio". The decision to recruit in Edinburgh therefore chimes with this approach.

However, the majority former BoSI staff are now employed in a third-party service company called Certus in Ireland, which offers loan servicing, arrears management, corporate debt management and recovery and business intelligence services.

The company has been recruiting in relatively significant numbers on the back of managing BoSI assets and liabilities in Ireland, and now employs over 800 people.

In Ireland, workout specialists are highly sought after, with all of the domestic banks recruiting in this area and a good number of former corporate bankers gravitating across to meet demand for their services.

So far, however, the roles in Edinburgh have proven difficult to recruit for, suggest sources.

"A lot of people have left the corporate banking sector due to the redundancies in this area over the last three years, while those that have remained are gainfully employed in more traditional corporate banking roles," says one recruitment source. "There's not much of an appetite to move into roles dealing with distressed loans in Ireland."