News Archive
2010
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2009
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2008
Bank News
Dream Run Over For The Banks As Bad Debts Bite
28 February 2008
RISING inflation, the Reserve Bank on the warpath, tighter credit and the prospect of a sharp increase in loan defaults are bad news for banks and their share prices... read full story
Westfield Says $7.4b In Bank To Buffer It From Credit Crunch
28 February 2008
WESTFIELD says its $10 billion development pipeline and the $7.4 billion it has sitting in the bank will buffer it from the global credit crisis... read full story
Bank Chief's Green Passion Helps Businesses Get Wind Of Switch-off
25 February 2008
CHANGE is in the wind, and it's the wind that gave Macquarie Bank's Melbourne executive chairman, Simon McKeon, his personal climate change experience - as a yachtsman... read full story
St George Bank Gives Reassurances On Centro Exposure
22 February 2008
THE subprime scourge has shaken St George Bank, which fell to a three-year low on the Australian Stock Exchange after reporting it had lent more than half a billion dollars to three Australian companies at risk of default - Centro, MFS and Allco... read full story
Bank Joins Debate On Jobless Rate
20 February 2008
THE Reserve Bank says low unemployment can be sustained without inflation breaking out, adding its two cents' worth to a debate in Parliament about the job market's effect on inflation... read full story
Bendigo Builds On Success While Other Banks Claw Back Their Losses
20 February 2008
WHILE financial stocks are being kicked worldwide, Victoria's Bendigo Bank proved that, in some cases at least, banks can still manage to please investors... read full story
Markets Tip More Interest Rate Pain
20 February 2008
FINANCIAL markets have marked down another interest rate rise next month as a virtual certainty, after the Reserve Bank revealed it came close this month to delivering two rate rises at once... read full story
Reserve Bank Minutes Reveal What Is On Its Hawkish Radar
20 February 2008
MINUTES of the Reserve Bank board's February 5 meeting propel the central bank even further into inflation hawk territory, but they also contain the first official reference to what could be the final and most serious leg of the global credit crisis... read full story
Anz Shock Puts Shares Into Tailspin
19 February 2008
AUSTRALIA'S third biggest bank, ANZ, has revealed a potentially costly exposure to the US financial crisis, triggering a sell-off of banking shares and adding to concerns about the vulnerability of the economy to global turmoil... read full story
Indexes Fall As Early Anz Report Gives Plenty Of Food For Thought
19 February 2008
ANZ Bank usually reports in April. But yesterday, a surprise announcement gave the market much to contemplate... read full story
Once Bitten, But Anz Won't Be Shy To Reassert Itself In Face Of Credit Crisis
19 February 2008
The bank dusts itself off after a stumble and instead of ducking for cover, looks for opportunity... read full story
St George Keeps On Slaying The Challenges
18 February 2008
ST GEORGE Bank is expected to re-assure investors that it has so far escaped the financial woes emerging at bigger rival Commonwealth Bank... read full story
St George To Prove It's No Commonwealth
18 February 2008
ST GEORGE Bank is expected to reassure nervous investors that the financial woes experienced by its much bigger rival, the Commonwealth Bank, which last week wiped billions of dollars off the banking sector's combined ASX value, have yet to have any major effect on its current year... read full story
Fantastic Prospect Grabs The Spotlight
17 February 2008
Bank robber had Gai Waterhouse waxing lyrical about the AJC Derby after he scored at Randwick yesterday like a budding top-liner. But then along came Light Fantastic, another three-year-old, at Moonee Valley... read full story
North Korea Bank Deal
17 February 2008
A SYDNEY grandfather was so successful in setting up North Korea's first financial institution his organisation has been asked to establish a bank inside one of the most closed regimes in the world... read full story
Cba Sets Alarm Bells Ringing, And Makes It Another Loss Day For Index
14 February 2008
BANK stocks tumbled to the finish line after Commonwealth Bank reported that after-tax profit had risen by just 4%, to $2.4 billion... read full story
Investors Wanted Reassurance, But Got Uncertainty
14 February 2008
AN understandable desire by the chief executive of the Commonwealth Bank, Ralph Norris, to play up his organisation's inherent caution by pricing risk into every lending decision ironically proved to be its undoing yesterday... read full story
Spooked Investors Dump Banks
14 February 2008
COMMONWEALTH BANK has fuelled fears the global credit contagion has brought the banking industry's stellar run of large profit increases to a halt, with a warning that it sees little chance of an easing of the funding crisis before the end of this year... read full story
Forecast: Hard Times Ahead
12 February 2008
The Reserve Bank calls the shots and it will raise interest rates to fight inflation... read full story
Rate Fright Sparks Loan Flight
12 February 2008
HOME owners are refinancing at record levels before another rise in interest rates next month, considered imminent after the Reserve Bank revealed it expected inflation to remain above its 2 to 3 per cent target range until 2010... read full story
Reserve's Warning Shocks Investors
12 February 2008
THE Reserve Bank has predicted economic growth will slow considerably this year, but not by enough to halt the upward march of interest rates... read full story
Warning Of Slower Growth And High Inflation Puts Investors In A Spin
12 February 2008
THE Reserve Bank has predicted economic growth will slow considerably this year, but not by enough to halt the upward march of interest rates... read full story
$2.4b Bank Profit Will Put It In The Firing Line
11 February 2008
THE Commonwealth Bank will reveal net half-year cash profits of at least $2.4 billion this week, putting it in the politicians' firing line after its controversial decision to raise home loan interest rates by more than last week's Reserve Bank increase... read full story
Critics Set To Pounce On Big Cba Profit
11 February 2008
COMMONWEALTH Bank is set to reveal a greater-than-expected decline in margins in the wake of the global credit crunch, but should still turn in a net half-year profit of at least $2.4 billion this week... read full story
Rudd's Nice Little Earner
10 February 2008
THE two Queenslanders at the top of the Federal Government, Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan, were spitting chips last week when the Commonwealth Bank jacked up home loan interest rates by more than the official 0.25 percentage point rise by the Reserve Bank... read full story
Quick To Pass On Rise And More
9 February 2008
MACQUARIE BANK will almost double the Reserve Bank's latest rate rise for some borrowers, as the fallout from the global credit crunch continues to intensify... read full story
Higher Rise Tipped As Nab Says Global Costs Not Passed On
8 February 2008
CONTINUING financial danger for home owners already digesting two mortgage rate rises in two months was underlined yesterday when the National Australia Bank said it had not passed on the full cost of the global credit squeeze to its customers... read full story
Home Rates Hit 9% But Some Savers Will Lose Out
8 February 2008
BANK mortgage rates have hit 9 per cent for the first time in a decade, as the Federal Government finalises a plan to help customers switch bank accounts... read full story
Bank's Supersize Rate Rise Blasted
7 February 2008
FINANCE Minister Lindsay Tanner has urged hundreds of thousands of mortgage borrowers to consider moving their loans from Australia's largest home lender, the Commonwealth Bank, after it announced an oversized rise of 0.3 of a percentage point in its interest rates... read full story
Macquarie Chief To Exit On A Record
7 February 2008
AUSTRALIA'S highest-paid executive will step down in May, promising that the small merchant bank he built into a global powerhouse will weather the global credit crisis... read full story
Tanner In Swipe At Bank's Rate Rise
7 February 2008
FINANCE Minister Lindsay Tanner has urged hundreds of thousands of mortgage borrowers to consider moving their loans from Australia's largest home lender, the Commonwealth Bank, after it announced an oversized rise of 0.3 of a percentage point in its interest rates... read full story
Brakes On, But Were We Already Slowing?
6 February 2008
THE debate about the wisdom of the Reserve Bank's decision to raise interest rates was underlined yesterday by a rush of coincidental news that suggested the bank's governor, Glenn Stevens, was applying the brakes to an economic vehicle already drifting into the slow lane... read full story
Rates Agony: Expect To Be Bitten Again And It Could Be Next Month
6 February 2008
HOME OWNERS reeling from the 11th official interest rate rise in a row should brace for worse to come - possibly as soon as next month - after the Reserve Bank warned of "significant inflation pressures" on the economy... read full story
Kelly's Razor Gang Gets Ready To Cut Costs
2 February 2008
THE new Westpac chief executive, Gail Kelly, is expected to start shaving costs from its key retail bank operation in moves which could add an extra $100 million to net profits in the next two years... read full story
Kelly's Razor May Give Westpac $100m Bonus
2 February 2008
NEW Westpac chief executive Gail Kelly is expected to start shaving costs from key retail bank operations that could add $100 million to net profit in the next two years... read full story
