Please note that as of August 2012, The Bank Investor site is no longer being updated. Australia and New Zealand's best analysis of the banking and finance industry can be found at Banking Day.
Articles by David Walker
David Walker contributes to The Bank Investor and its sister publication, Banking Day.
CBA takes new view on Asia 
Commonwealth Bank last week provided an alternative view of the profits the group earns in Asia.
According to the bank's full-year financial statements, CBA made a cash net profit from its direct investments in banks and fund managers in Asia of A$53 million in the year to June 2011.
The bank's ... More
IPO watch: Genworth listing for 2012
Mortgage insurer Genworth Financial plans to sell up to 40 per cent of the equity in its Australian business through a listing on the Australian Securities Exchange next year. The US-based insurer announced the plan on Friday. Genworth is the larger of the two firms that dominate the mortgage ... More
Published on Monday, 7 November, 2011
Filed under Genworth, initial public offering, IPO
Asian horizons keep ANZ on its toes
ANZ hopes to find new banking acquisitions in Asia, as European and North American banks sell their overseas assets to prop up troubled domestic operations.
Speaking at the presentation of the bank's full-year profit for 2011 on Thursday, ANZ chief executive Mike Smith laid out his acquisition ... More
Costs rising faster than revenue at Westpac
Costs may rise faster than revenues for the second year in a row at Westpac next year, as the bank soldiers on with an array of projects designed to strip out expenses and underpin a lift in product sales. This will dampen earnings growth. Most of the payoff may not flow through until 2013 or ... More
NAB sticking with a long-term growth strategy
National Australia Bank chief executive Cameron Clyne is determined not to "short term the business" in response to mounting regulatory, funding and competitive pressures. Clyne said yesterday that he had spent his three years as chief executive digging NAB out of a hole and he did not intend to ... More
Macquarie Group management takes a tough line on returns
Macquarie Group chief executive, Nicholas Moore, has promised chareholders that he will take a tough line when it comes to seeing that business units achieve their performance targets. Business units at Macquarie will have to meet return on equity targets, and those that don't will be "on the way ... More
Bendigo forecasts lower investor returns
Returns to investors in banks will fall as banks increase their capital ratios, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank's chair, Robert Johanson, told the annual meeting last week.
"Increasing capital requirements, lower risk [and] more conservative balance sheets are part of the new, stricter regulatory world ... More
Bank earnings as good as they get
Controversies over bank profits are never far away in Australia, and the profit reporting season for banks that kicks off this week, with National Australia Bank the first to report, will no doubt refresh the arguments once more. The headlines may be pretty familiar. The news will be of profits ... More
Published on Monday, 24 October, 2011
US money market funds favour Australian bank debt
One piece of not-so-good news from the week might be that European banks are not that much closer to working out, with a lot of help from their governments and central banks, how to stabilise their funding.
The flip side of this looks like good news for Australian banks, since one important ... More
Published on Monday, 24 October, 2011
Filed under funding
Takeover in view for Customers ATM
A takeover bid sooner than later seems in prospect for ASX-listed Customers Limited, the leading owner of automatic teller machines in Australia and a successful consolidator in a once fractured sector.
The Australian Securities Exchange last Monday forced Customers to confirm that it "held ... More
Published on Monday, 24 October, 2011
Filed under small institutions
