Australian Banking & Finance articles from January 2005

Australian Banking & Finance archives from January 2005

Angry with Japan incident, Citigroup CEO seeks employee accountability: Citigroup chief executive Officer Charles Prince, "embarrassed" and "angry" following the forced shutdown of the company's private bank in Japan, said he is travelling the world with an edict for employees: "how we do business is just as important as how much business we do.".
January 31, 2005... "We've been talking about personal accountability, personal responsibility, and about sustaining a culture where only the highest standards of doing business are acceptable," Prince said during a speech recently at the Japan Society, a non...

Fight against dirty money more about changing mindsets.(anti-money laundering)
January 31, 2005... THE RECENT EVENTS ACROSS THE world and in Asia have led towards renewed focus on Anti Money Laundering (AML) practices of the banks in the region. The revelations of loopholes in the AML practices of some of the global banks and subsequent...

Farewell Phil Ayling.(resigns as editor)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... Sadly, we farewell Phil, our editor for the past 10 years, who is now moving on to new ventures. We thank him for his terrific contribution to the magazine over the years and wish him well for the future. Australian Banking & Finance became the...

St George wins Corporate Governance award.(Current Account)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... St George won the award for Corporate Governance at the 2004 Ethical Investor Sustainability Awards. St George was congratulated for improving its corporate governance to achieve best practice in line with ASX principles. The strategy developed...

Citigroup Korea CEO Ha Yung Ku, Corporate Bank Country Head Michael Zink.(Current Account)
January 31, 2005... Citigroup Korea CEO Ha Yung Ku (centre), Corporate Bank Country Head Michael Zink, (left), and Country Business Manager Richard D. Jackson hold hands for photo session before a press briefing in Seoul recently. Citigroup, which took over South...

Life matters.(superannuation; asset backing)
January 31, 2005... LIFE INSURANCE STATISTICS FROM APRA INDICATE that changes in the asset test exemption for complying annuities introduced in September 2004 have led to significant one-off annuity sales--contributing to the $10.9 billion in life office premiums...

ASIC charges NAB options traders.(Current Account)(Australian Securities and Investments Commission)(National Australia Bank)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... ASIC HAS BROUGHT CRIMINAL CHARGES AGAINST four former foreign currency traders with National Australia Bank. The charges were laid against Luke Duffy, David Bullen, Vincent Ficarra and Gianni Gray, and were brought following an ASIC...

Australia top in M&A.(Current Account)(merger and aquisition)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... FIGURES FROM GLOBAL information provider Dealogic, show that in 2004 Australia was the dominant player in the region, (ex-Japan) in merger and acquisition activity. In 2004, Australia had 943 deals totalling $82.8 billion, an increase of...

CBA completes mortgage securitisation.(Commonwealth Bank of Australia)(Medallion Trust)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... COMMONWEALTH BANK HAS completed its seventh global issuance of $4.16 billion mortgaged backed securities through Medallion Trust, its Mortgage Backed Securities program. The assets comprise fixed and variable rate mortgage loans originated from...

ASIC accepts undertaking from Colonial First State.(Australian Securities and Investments Commission)(Colonial First State Property Trust Group)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... ASIC ACCEPTED AN ENFORCEABLE undertaking from Colonial First State in relation to advertisements it had placed that ASIC alleged were misleading. In June last year, Colonial First State placed two ads in the Sunday Age newspaper. One ad...

Developments in mezzanine debt.(News)
January 31, 2005... DEVELOPMENTS IN EUROPE IN THE SIZE AND sophistication of the mezzanine debt market provide an interesting perspective of how things may develop further in Australia. Traditionally, mezzanine finance, combining elements of both subordinated...

Melbourne Centre for Financial Studies announced.(News)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... Australia's capacity to nurture and develop world-class expertise and knowledge in its financial services industry received a boost in December with the announcement that a consortium of three leading Victorian universities (the University, of...

Super assets close to $650 billion.(News)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... THE LATEST FIGURES FROM APRA show total superannuation assets for Australia rose over the September 2004 quarter by 2.8 per cent and now stand at $648.9 billion. Super contributions for the year to September 2004 totalled $60.9 billion with...

Australian banking system considered low risk: Australia's banking industry stands alone as the lowest risk among the Asia-Pacific systems according to Standard & Poor's, who released an analysis of credit risk in Asia-Pacific banking at the end of 2004.(News)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... Australia's medium-term economic growth prospects continue to compare favourably with those of developed Western countries, according to the report. In addition, its prudent banking regulation and transparent and well-developed accounting...

Regulatory environment is 'world's best'.(News)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... REFORMS TO AUSTRALIA'S financial services sector have left the country's capital markets in a better position than most other OECD nations, according to a new report from the National Competition Council. The report, commissioned from the...

First data resolves the issues of end-to-end managed ATM networks: First Data International (First Data) is Australia's largest independent electronic payment systems network operator--managing well over a billion transactions annually, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.(Special Feature--ATMs)
January 31, 2005... First Data currently provides full end-to-end ATM Managed Services to a range of Australian financial services organisations through its Cashcard ATM network. With its experience in high volume transaction environments now well established,...

Protecting banks in the digital age: financial institutions are being threatened by a new breed of criminals with the expertise to penetrate defensive systems that cannot adapt to changing risk. Reg Bohler, managing director of Diebold Australia discusses solutions to thwart them.(Special Feature--ATMs)
January 31, 2005... Bushrangers are still robbing banks today. However, today's bushranger has traded his guns for the more modern weapons of stealth, trickery and personal computers. Cyber-age criminals who prey on financial institutions pose a risk far...

ATMIA hosts first ATM event for Asia.(Special Feature--ATMs)(ATM Industry Association)(automated teller machines)
January 31, 2005... ATMs & Electronic Banking in Asia 7-8 April, 2005 JW Marriott Hotel Hong Kong, China. Distinguished speakers from China, Singapore, India, Bangladesh, Korea, Australia, USA and the United Kingdom will come to Hong Kong this April for "ATMs...

Lost opportunities in Australian banking: one of the biggest buzzwords in the financial services sector in the past six months has been search engine optimisation.
January 31, 2005... As its name suggests, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) involves the 'optimisation' of a website to ensure that the major search engines rank the website highly when a specific keyword is used as the search query. Ensuring that your website is...

Terrorist financing: who is hiding in your customer base? Since the attacks of 9/11, banks have been playing an increasingly important role in the war against terror.(International)
January 31, 2005... The financial services world has been at the forefront in the fight against terrorism by identifying terrorist financing routes. "The financial community is the first public sector to be called upon to assist government and the intelligence...

Pie is big enough for everyone in Asia Pacific.(wealthy people)
January 31, 2005... THE RAPIDLY GROWING WEALTH OF HIGH NET WORTH CLIENTS HAS MADE players of different sizes interested in Asia Pacific. According to a Cap Gemini and Merrill Lynch World Wealth Report 2004, the Asia Pacific region continued to record one of...

Banking on Asia--Rosy prospects, forgotten questions: HSBC Chairman David Eldon talks about why HSBC is overtly optimistic about Asia even when events hint otherwise.(International)
January 31, 2005... LET ME BEGIN BY LETTING YOU in on a little secret about HSBC. This particular secret relates to why HSBC is overtly optimistic about Asia when the consensus is for slower growth in most parts of the region next year. When there are concerns...

Top insurance executives discuss key issues.(Best Insurers Panel Discussion-Pictorial)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... Four top executives in the insurance indstry, IAG chief Michael Hawker, Suncorp Metway group executive Diana Eilert, GM Protection Services Greg Einfeld of MLC and Comminsure's Peter Beck addressed some of the major industry issues at a panel...

Murray's "no brainer".(Behind The Screens)(David Murray )(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... CBA's David Murray turned in another top performance and his share price shows it. Whilst he may be smarting over the pillaging of his senior talents by former CBA honcho Michael Ullmer now at NAB, Murray's spectacular share price increase is a...

Gail or Mike tipped ...(Behind The Screens)(Ziggy Switkowski's soon to be vacated position at Telstra)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... Ziggy Switkowski's soon to be vacated position at Telstra is getting a lot of interest around the town. Screens hears that Gall Kelly of St George and Mike Hawker of IAG are hot contenders and nearly everyone discounts the possibility of an...

Heads roll.(Umbrella Bank)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... The Umbrella Bank is also suffering from PR problems that just won't go away. Readers will remember that the lender's "misfortunes" in Japan, which led to its private banking operations being suspended, were initially brushed off by staff with...

Noted security.(bank notes)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... Hong Kong has finally received its much vaunted new banknotes after an exhaustive information campaign that included a media blitz, a series of seminars and, believe it or not, the deployment of several hundred "student ambassadors" to explain...

Capital gains.(News)
January 31, 2005... "Look at it this way--this is the first day of the rest of your money." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]