Bank of Ireland said it was changing its fiscal year-end to December 31 from end-March, to move in line with most major European banks, and would not issue an expected trading statement this week.

Bank of Ireland, which is a quarter-owned by the state, said it would next announce results in late March for the nine months to end-December.

Changing its business year-end will mean Ireland’s biggest bank by market value won’t have a so-called ‘closed period’ in April and May pending its full-year results, which could give it more flexibility to approach the markets for extra capital.

Bank of Ireland will transfer loans with a book value of up to 16 billion euros ($22bn) to the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), a so-called “bad bank”, and analysts expected it to need about two billion of fresh capital due to the resulting write-downs.

In September, nationalised Anglo Irish Bank changed its financial year-end to December 31 from Sept. 30.

Allied Irish Banks, the second biggest lender by market value and also partly owned by the state, already has a business year matching the calendar year.