Australian Banking & Finance articles from April 2003

Australian Banking & Finance archives from April 2003

Goldman acquires muscle: Goldman Sachs has fulfilled a long-held ambition to take a major share of the Australian market in acquiring 45% of the largest independent brokerage, JBWere Ltd.
April 16, 2003... The deal will give the leading US investment bank more muscle to climb up to the top ranks in Australia's $28.4 billion merger market, increasing its stockbroking market share to 10% from 1.5%. It is also likely to trigger more mergers in...

Home loan loss fears misplaced: Johnson.(Brian Johnson)(Brief Article)
April 16, 2003... OFFSHORE INSTITUTIONS HAVE oversold Australian banking stocks because of fears of massive home loan losses, but that was unlikely to eventuate, according to the nation's top-ranking banking analyst. JP Morgan Securities Australia analyst...

IBSA welcomes tax law change. (Current Account).(International Banks and Securities Association)(Brief Article)
April 16, 2003... THE INTERNATIONAL BANKS AND Securities Association has welcomed the introduction of technical amendments to the tax laws that will streamline the thin capitalisation rules for financial institutions. Taxation Laws Amendment Bill No 5 (TLAB...

Banking world. (Current Account).(online stock trading going downhill)(Brief Article)
April 16, 2003... NEW YORK: Back-to-back profit warnings from Charles Schwab Corp and Ameritrade Holding Corp amount to an acknowledgement that the one-booming online stock trading business is in danger of going the way of the dot-com bubble that fuelled it. The...

Mortgage brokers look to reform.(Mortgage Industry Association of Australasia)(Brief Article)
April 16, 2003... THE MORTGAGE INDUSTRY Association of Australasia (MIAA) is addressing the issues raised in an ASIC commissioned report into the finance and mortgage broking Industry, MI/LA CEO Phil Naylor said. ASIC commissioned the report by the Consumer...

Batchelor takes the money for now. (Current Account).(Paul Batchelor's payout from AMP)(Brief Article)
April 16, 2003... FORMER AMP CHIEF PAUL Batchelor has banked his termination cheque but may want more. Earlier this month, AMP delivered a cheque for $1.4 million after helpfully subtracting tax worth $700,000 from the payout, and challenged him to sue if...

Don't write off Lloyd : QBE. (Current Account).(QBE Insurance Ltd.)(Brief Article)
April 16, 2003... INSURERS HAD BEEN TOO HASTY in writing off the profit potential and financial, strength of the London-based Lloyd's market, says global, insurer and reinsurer QBE Insurance Ltd. QBE, the second biggest player in the Lloyd's market, said...

On the record. (Current Account).
April 16, 2003... "International investors seem to be of the belief that, basically, the housing loan bubble is going to crack, which will cause massive losses in housing lending. However, my personal view is it's now probably time to start looking back at the...

Smart card to aid fraud battle. (News).(Keycorp, MasterCard International introduce smart card)
April 16, 2003... SECURE ELECTRONIC TRANSACTION solutions provider Keycorp and MasterCard International have announced a US$1.99 MULTOS smart card to help banks address the globally escalating fraud affecting credit and debit cards. By introducing a more...

Basel accord may increase financial system imbalances. (News).
April 16, 2003... NEW RULES AIMED AT REDUCING risk in the banking system will not only discourage lending to developing economies but could also be self-defeating in that they will increase imbalances in the financial system, according to new research from a...

Axiss delivers in U.S. prime time. (News).(Axiss Australia's chief executive Les Hosking appears on CNBC program)(Brief Article)
April 16, 2003... DURING ITS RECENT PROMOtional mission to New York and Washington (18-22 February), Axiss Australia secured prime time media coverage on CNBC television's Wake Up CA, one of America's leading daily business programs. For eight minutes,...

Steve Crane: the thinking man's CEO. (News).(chief executive of ABN AMRO)
April 16, 2003... FOR SOMEONE WHO ORIGINALLY intended becoming either an architect or a civil engineer, Steve Crane, chief executive of ABN AMRO, hasn't done too badly for himself. Choosing his sixth tertiary preference, Crane studied commerce at the...

Share options--where to now? (human capital).
April 16, 2003... A NEW LAYER OF COMPLEXITY was recently added to the executive remuneration debate, with the release of the Australian Accounting Standards Board's Exposure Draft 108 on "Share-Based Payments". The proposed new rules will require the...

Professionals take to margin lending. (News).
April 16, 2003... THE POPULARITY OF PROTECTED lending has surged among the professions, accounting for almost 60% of all new clients, according to the latest data from Macquarie Bank. The joint head of Macquarie Margin lending Scott Young said the bulk of...

Griffiths set to take over as head of Norwich Union. (News).(Allan Griffiths)(Brief Article)
April 16, 2003... ALLAN GRIFFITHS HAS BEEN given the nod to take over from Rob Garnsworthy as CEO of Norwich Union Australia. Griffiths, 50, who is currently group director of distribution, will assume the role on April 24 when Garnsworthy retires. With...

Rabobank earnings increase to $160m. (News).(Rabobank Australia and New Zealand Group)(Brief Article)
April 16, 2003... RABOBANK AUSTRALIA AND NEW Zealand Group earned a pre-tax operating profit of $159.7 million for the year ended December 31, 2002. This represented a 22% increase on the previous year's $130.9 million profit. Revenue for the local arm...

Royal ready to sail off for $2bn. (News).(Royal and Sun Alliance Insurance Group PLC)
April 16, 2003... ROYAL & SUN ALLIANCE Insurance Group Plc, the world's oldest insurer, plans to raise as much as $2.1 billion selling shares in its Australian and New Zealand business. The initial public offering would be the world's largest so far this...

Lifestyle projects to provide opportunities for lenders: demographics guru and KPMG Partner Bernard Salt outlines the key demographic and cultural influences affecting the Australian mass market now and over the balance of this decade. (News).(Column)
April 16, 2003... I HAVE A SIMPLE PROPOSITION: there are three Australian cultures that fundamentally set the direction of urban development and investment. The first Australian culture was the 19th Century culture of the bush, forged at a time when most...

Community banks use mystery shopping test: regionals banks, building societies and credit unions in Australia are studying a report which shows three out of four community banks in the US actively monitor customer service quality and nearly a quarter (22%) go so far as to employ "mystery shoppers". (News).
April 16, 2003... A joint community banking survey by the American Bankers Association and the ABA Banking Journal compiled the views of top management at 760 community banks across the country on topics ranging from customer service measurement, funding,...

World finance conference to attract broad audience. (News).(Brief Article)
April 16, 2003... AUSTRALIA WILL HOST one of the most important financial services conferences ever in November. Keynote speakers are likely to include the chairman of the US Federal Reserve Dr Alan Greenspan, Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter...

Leveraging quality monitoring for improved sales and service. (Special Feature--Call Centres & Voice Recognition).
April 16, 2003... CUSTOMER SERVICE-SATISFACTION and customer retention remain top priorities for companies on a worldwide basis. This reinforces the need for an effective customer relationship management strategy that is understood and carried out at every...

Migration to contact centres will boost revenues by 20%. (Special Feature--Call Centres & Voice Recognition).
April 16, 2003... CUSTOMER SERVICE IS CRUCIAL to the success of an enterprise. Yesterday's single-function, inbound, telephone-based call centre is no longer able to service today's customers, and companies must either adopt multifunction, multidirectional...

Suncorp upgrades telephony platform. (Special Feature--Call Centres & Voice Recognition).(Brief Article)
April 16, 2003... SUNCORP-METWAY IS UPGRADING two computer telephony platforms following its acquisition of GIO in 2001. The existing systems, which facilitate general insurance and compulsory third party (CTP) insurance enquiries for GIO customers, will be...

Westpac increases call centre capacity. (Special Feature--Call Centres & Voice Recognition).(Brief Article)
April 16, 2003... WESTPAC HAS CHANGED IN ITS call centre strategy with a move towards fewer, larger contact centres across the country. This change in strategy would see an increase in Westpac's total call centre capacity over the next three years from...

Bank customers offer negative call feedback. (Special Feature--Call Centres & Voice Recognition).
April 16, 2003... ACCORDING TO NEW BENCHmarking studies, contact centres in the financial services industry fall into the "liability" category--operating neither efficiently nor effectively. Deloitte Consulting partner Nidal Haddad told CRMDaily that the...

Managing call centres by capturing diversity.(Brief Article)
April 16, 2003... The modern call centre in Banking and Financial Services is a win-win channel for customer service delivery. Customers benefit from access to a wide range of services delivered through a consistent interface, while the financial institution can...

Authenticating identity in financial services. (Special Feature-Call Centres & Voice Recognition).
April 16, 2003... THERE IS LITTLE DOUBT THAT natural language speech recognition (NLSR) technology has provided a competitive advantage in customer care for financial institutions globally, by making possible self-service telephone systems that are...

Multi-media and voice `the next wave'. (Special Feature-Call Centres & Voice Recognition).
April 16, 2003... CALL CENTRES ARE SPENDING AN estimated $1.4 billion on technology a year. Despite this, says technology provider KAZ Group, technology is emerging as a key differentiator between call centres in the Australian marketplace. KAZ's...

US investors make room for our mortgage bonds. (News).
April 16, 2003... US BOND INVESTORS, LOOKING beyond their own backyard, have made room in their portfolios for bonds backed by mortgage loans from the UK and Australia. UK and Australian mortgage lenders have increased the number and size of bond sales...

Behind the screens. (News).
April 16, 2003... Though bankers often talk of the difficulty in finding good marketing or sales staff, a survey of community bankers in the US claims the hardest post to fill was that of trust officer, with 91% saying this post would be hard or very had to...

Mack reaches for knife. (News).(Credit Suisse First Boston hires John Mack)
April 16, 2003... JOHN MACK, HIRED TO CLEAN house at Credit Suisse First Boston, is still struggling 18 months on with many of the same headaches he inherited--high costs, falling revenues and regulatory tangles. Mack, who joined CSFB in July 2001, has cut...

ANZ sharpens Asian focus.(initiatives in Thailand, China)
April 30, 2003... ANZ BANK IS ACCELERATING ITS Asian strategy with initiatives in Thailand and China. The biggest move is a plan to buy up to 20% of Thai Military Bank for as much as $150 million to offset slowing growth in its mature home market. ...

2003 AB&F Awards enter final stage.
April 30, 2003... THE 2003 AUSTRALIAN BANKING and Finance newsmagazine Awards have entered their final stage with votes now being counted in the 12 categories. The Awards have attracted enormous interest this year and the winners will be announced at a gala...

ING banks $64m on scale efficiencies. (Current Account).(ING Bank (Australia) Ltd. profits)(Brief Article)
April 30, 2003... ING BANK (AUSTRALIA) LTD returned a pre-tax profit of $64.1 million for the year to December 31. The result compares to a profit before tax of $2.9 million in 2001 and a toss of $24.5 million in 2000. The loss in 2000 was largely...

US bank gives small business silver service. (Current Account).(US Bancorp)(Brief Article)
April 30, 2003... MORE THAN 50,000 SMALL businesses in the US received a phone call or visit from a bank small business representative on April 22, 23 or 24 as part of a "blitz" in which the whole company focuses its attention on the needs of small business...

RBNZ to review supervision policy. (Current Account).(Reserve Bank of New Zealand)(Brief Article)
April 30, 2003... THE RESERVE BANK OF NEW Zealand (RBNZ) is reviewing its system of supervising New Zealand's 18 banks, RBNZ Governor Alan Bollard said. Bollard said the review of policies was meant to further improve existing arrangements, which he said...

Macquarie Bank expands in Korea. (Current Account).(agreement with Woori Bank)(Brief Article)
April 30, 2003... MACQUARIE BANK HAS SIGNED AN agreement with Korea's Woori Bank for the development of an equity derivatives business in Korea. The agreement follows the memorandum of understanding entered into between Macquarie and Woori in January. ...

On the record. (Current Account).
April 30, 2003... "The changes proposed... in my opinion are important and will make a meaningful. contribution to the restoration of public confidence in the market." JUSTICE NEVILLE OWENS, RELEASING HIS FINAL REPORT ON THE COLLAPSE OF HIH INSURANCE. ...

Car insurance stalling on the net: automotive insurers are highly reliant on customer service quality for their competitive advantage. While most car insurance customers are primarily concerned with securing the lowest premium, most insurance companies do not make this their key selling point. (News).
April 30, 2003... Indeed, the majority view is that discounting is an unattractive sales driver. The problem however is that, more than most financial service providers, car insurers have little to differentiate themselves beyond price. Traditionally,...

World finance conference to address key issues. (News).
April 30, 2003... THE WORLD FINANCIAL SERVICES Conference to be held in Sydney in November will address some of key issues facing domestic and international financial institutions. Prime Minister John Howard will open the conference and Treasurer Peter...

Treasury hedging differences. (News).(Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong)(Brief Article)
April 30, 2003... ALTHOUGH ROLES AND responsibilities of treasury and the overall approaches to managing risks are similar in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong, there are important differences observed in governance and control and in hedging and financing...

Find a mate, or go it alone? (examining the customer with Carlson Marketing).(relationship marketing)
April 30, 2003... ONE OF THE RECENT GROWING trends in relationship marketing around the world today is where two or more organisations come together in a partnership to offer their mutual customer base a combined benefit that extends the company/customer...

HIH Royal Commission: was it all worth it? The HIH Royal Commission cost just a fraction of the $5.3 billion lost by the company it was set up to investigate, but at nearly $40 million was still a very expensive exercise. (News).
April 30, 2003... SO WAS THE 14-MONTH painstaking, reputation-ruining excavation of HIH Insurance worth it? In his findings released this month the man in charge, Justice Neville Owen, said he thought so. "Everything that can be done should be done to...

Lenders must revisit fraud assumptions. (News).(identity fraud)
April 30, 2003... WHILE IDENTITY FRAUD IS nightmarish for the individual, it's no walk in the park for tending institutions either. In 2002, 161,819 individuals in the US reported to the Federal Trade Commission that their identity had been stolen--bringing...

Citigroup rebrands business. (News).(Brief Article)
April 30, 2003... MANY CITIGROUP BUSINESSES around the globe are being rebranded, aligning them more closely with the parent company, Citigroup Inc. This global, initiative means Citibank Corporate Bank and Salomon Smith Barney's institutional, and...

CFOs fear more corporate failures: despite the fact that Australia has directly experienced several high profile corporate failures, CFOs of the largest organisations in Australia and New Zealand do not consider recent legislative and regulatory reforms will be sufficient to prevent a repeat of HIH or Enron. (News).
April 30, 2003... ACCORDING TO RESEARCH BY Deloitte Consulting, this is in marked contrast to the US, where the majority of CFO respondents expressed confidence in the ability of the reforms to prevent another corporate collapse. According to Geoff Bell,...

AMP quits mortgages. (News).(mortgage assets being sold to HSBC, GE Commercial Finance)(Brief Article)
April 30, 2003... AMP IS SELLING $2.8 BILLION IN residential mortgages and property loan assets to international banking group HSBC and GE Commercial Finance. AMP said the sate was part of a restructuring of its AMP Banking unit announced in November 2002...

Property prices may crash, Fitch. (News).(Brief Article)
April 30, 2003... A WEEK AFTER RESERVE BANK governor Ian Macfarlane issued a warning on rising household debt, ratings agency Fitch Ratings has raised concerns about the "runaway" property market. Fitch says Australian residential property prices are more...

CIO register. (special feature).(finance industry's top chief information officers)
April 30, 2003... The role of the chief information officer--or head of information technology--is absolutely critical to the future positioning of Australia's financial. services companies. There is no other industry changing faster than financial, services...

Unity Trust Bank uses SAS to detect money laundering.
April 30, 2003... AS GOVERNMENTS ACROSS THE globe implement new regulations to squelch the growing threat of money laundering, banks and other financial, entities are finding themselves accountable for any illegal, financial, activity that happens on their...

The tenure of Reserve Bank governor Ian Macfarlane has been widely discussed in government. (behind the screens).(Brief Article)
April 30, 2003... The tenure of Reserve Bank governor Ian Macfarlane has been widely discussed in government. His seven-year contract is up in September and insiders say his reappointment is unlikely unless a deal can be cut for a lesser time. The big rumour in...

The Australian Consumers' Association touched a raw nerve with bankers recently by calling for controls on lending. (behind the screens).(Brief Article)
April 30, 2003... The Australian Consumers' Association touched a raw nerve with bankers recently by calling for controls on lending. Re-regulation is not a word that sits comfortably with the industry for obvious reasons and it's fair to say the consumer body...

Who was the Swann Insurance employee seen having a disagreement with a police officer on a Honolulu highway recently? (behind the screens).
April 30, 2003... Who was the Swann Insurance employee seen having a disagreement with a police officer on a Honolulu highway recently? We believe it was all a misunderstanding over the interpretation of speed limits. Both parties walked away smiling in the end,...

Bank of Queensland chief David Liddy is working some real magic. (behind the screens).(half yearly results)(Brief Article)
April 30, 2003... Bank of Queensland chief David Liddy is working some real magic The group's latest half yearly result ($21.3 million after tax and 60% up on the previous year) was a beauty. Most significantly, Liddy has stashed costs and putted the cost to...

Alternative payment methods. (News).(chip cards to be implemented in Europe)
April 30, 2003... EVER SINCE THE EARLIEST DAYS, payments systems have evolved. Initially there was a bartering system. To make exchange more efficient, coins were developed and steps taken to ensure their value and integrity. Bills of exchange,...

Cashcard Australia. (Executives on the Move).(Paul Biancardi appointed director)(Brief Article)
April 30, 2003... CASHCARD AUSTRALIA HAS appointed Paul Biancardi a director of the company. Biancardi, currently chairman of HJ & B Group Ltd, a director of Mirvac and Crescent Capital Partners, has extensive experience as a chartered accountant. He...

GMAC Financial Services. (Executives on the Move).(Carlos Eduardo Modeli Ribeiro appointed Asia Pacific Operations vp)(Brief Article)
April 30, 2003... GMAC Financial Services, the financial, services subsidiary of General Motors, has named Carlos Eduardo Modeli Ribeiro vice president of Asia Pacific Operations. Ribeiro succeeds Mark F. Bole who was named group vice president, European...

HSBC Bank Australia. (Executives on the Move).(Graham McNamara appointed debt finance head)(Brief Article)
April 30, 2003... HSBC Bank Australia has appointed Graham McNamara as head of debt finance for Australia and New Zealand. NcNamara with assume leadership and responsibility for driving HSBC's strategy and capabilities in the debt-financing arena including...