On one hand, the government has just waved through one of the biggest banking mergers of the last 20 years. On the other, they’ve been waving the big stick at Australia’s supermarket oligopoly.
Martien Lubberink, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
The Commerce Commission says New Zealand’s banking sector is uncompetitive. But in the rush to fix the problem, regulators need to ensure they don’t introduce risk and instability into the system.
Peter Martin, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
Former Reserve Bank and Treasury chiefs have gone on to run Westpac, the National Australia Bank, the ANZ, and Macquarie Bank. It makes regulating those banks hard.
Westpac and the ANZ have suspended dividends payments. The National Australia Bank has slashed them. The peculiarities of our tax system explain why retirees hate this more than they should.
The charges laid against ANZ and other banks over alleged cartel-like behaviour suggests that Australia is following the United States in cracking down on anti-competitive behaviour.
The Australian Banking Association says ‘nearly 80% of bank profits go straight back to shareholders’, the majority of whom are ‘everyday Australians’. Is that right?
Even though the Prime Minister and heads of the big four banks argue costly political uncertainty is the reason for the royal commission, experts argue the banks’ behaviour itself is the real cost.
The major banks have tried to downplay their role in manipulating the BBSW interest rate benchmark. But this is not the first instance of bad behaviour.
The agile working style was originally designed by tech companies for efficiency in software development but now one of Australia’s big four banks wants to implement this.
ASIC is telling CommInsure to do what it should have been doing all along. Let’s forget the past and mistreatment of customers, it’s paradise for firms that prey on the sick and dying.