Good news all round from Permanent TSB (PTSB) this Thursday morning it seems – apart from those pesky variable mortgage holders.

The fact the bank has confirmed, as quickly as it has, the price range for its new share issue; next week’s likely pricing date and the May 5 listing date, confirms the 'word on the market' that demand for the new shares is very strong – and that the offer is four or five times oversubscribed.

This is a positive development in itself, though not so positive perhaps for prospective smaller shareholders, who are likely to be squeezed out to a significant degree by the institutions and larger private buyers.

Evidence of pent-up demand for PTSB stock, based on a solid recovery performance by its current management team, but more pertinently on the opportunity to buy into a rapidly-recovering Irish economic recovery play, is encouraging for Government, apart from the impact on those pesky mortgage holders.

Principally, it augurs well for the planned much larger part re-privatisation of AIB over the next nine-to-twelve months. It also brings into focus the tightrope balancing act currently being performed by the management teams of the Pillar Banks and by the Government itself.

PTSB Chief Executive, Jeremy Masding has made it clear to shareholders generally and to those who might be about to buy that the bank is not yet financially strong enough to reduce its 4.5 percent variable rate and that political pressure on this issue threatened an expected return to profitability next year.

His departing counterpart, David Duffy of AIB, made the same point at the Oireachtas Finance Committee on Wednesday in reminding his political masters that they can’t have it both ways just yet - lower mortgage rates for hard-pressed voters immediately or deliver the most attractively-packaged financial offering possible for prospective private shareholders in the longer term.

Still, as he chooses his next step on the high wire, Michael Noonan will be pleased by the repatriation to the Exchequer of up to €500m arising from the PTSB flotation.

This arises from the planned repurchase by the bank of €400m in high-coupon “CoCo” loan notes and the likelihood the State could generate up to €100m by reducing its shareholding to the 75 percent threshold required for main market listings.

Good news here for PTSB as well as it saves close to €40m in interest payments on the CoCo notes through by their early redemption, a prize for which they’ll pay the Minister an additional €10.5m.

To complete the good news process – a final balancing trick by the highly-paid advisers to the flotation: the need to price the shares as attractively as possible to encourage solid, long-term institutional investors on board, but close enough to the €4.50 upper end of the price range to ensure no politically embarrassing, short-term windfall gains for large investors.