LONDON, Dec 6 (Reuters) - - Irish banks will have to shrink their balance sheets at a faster pace if Ireland is to gain continued access to emergency funding, the Financial Times said on Monday.
Citing people briefed on the details of Ireland's 85 billion euro bailout by the EU and the IMF, the FT said the banks will have to sell tens of billions of euros in legacy loans in a matter of months.
"The deleveraging has to go fast. That was part of the deal to keep ECB funding," said one person involved in the discussions, according to the newspaper.
"The ECB felt there had to be an element of a stick," said another source.
Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Banks have a combined loan book of 200 billion euros ($268.4 billion) and would be the two lenders most affected by forced asset sales, the FT said.
The government would force them to reduce their loan-to-deposit ratios to 110-120 percent by 2013 from around 150-160 percent.
The newspaper cited analysts saying Bank of Ireland would have to sell about 20 billion euros of loans, while Allied Irish would have to dispose of 15 billion euros, starting with a total of 10 billion euros put on the market within the next 12 months. ($1=.7452 Euro) (Reporting by Michel Rose; Editing by Neil Fullick)