ANZ's Asian strategy has failed

Extract from my AFR article: "One worry is ANZ's Asian expansion strategy, which I have criticised for years as a source of entirely unnecessary risk. "What comparative advantage do Australian bankers have competing in Asian territories," I have repeatedly asked. The history of the major banks' offshore forays, with NAB's UK banking disaster the most recent case study, suggests absolutely none. If neither NAB nor APRA can prudently monitor and manage credit risks in a country like Britain, which has similar political, legal, cultural, and banking conventions to our own, what hope do they have in China, India, Singapore, or Indonesia? "ANZ's claims of a low-risk Asian expansion have been proven false," says Merrill Lynch banking analyst Andrew Hill. "ANZ led us to believe that its expansion into Asia was low risk, but in [the second half of 2015] we saw the institutional bank's new impaired assets treble," he continued." Read the rest here for free (VIEW LINK)