Westpac has written the playbook – Can someone send it to our Politicians?!

Despite views to the contrary from a number of commentators, CBA, NAB and ANZ have indeed followed suit and raised their rates. In reality this was a relatively easy call to make given the historic behaviour of the ‘Big 4’ and the commercial reality attached to increasing bank capital. What’s of more interest now is ‘where to from here’? In part, the answer lies with our politicians. Our base case now is that the Reserve Bank has the imprimatur to push ahead with a rate cut sooner rather than later. Further we are of the view that it is increasingly likely that the larger banks will not pass on all of one or more of these future rate reductions. In effect this is a very good outcome for Australia : ie the RBA is able to play its part in stimulating the economy through cheaper money and a depreciating currency, whilst not over-stimulating the emerging property bubble. In all this would appear to be the ‘least worst’ scenario!
Romano Sala Tenna

Katana Asset Management

The problem however arises when the beloved representatives of the people in Canberra enter the fray.   Whilst ‘bank bashing’ has been a national pastime in Canberra for many decades, it is time that our elected members stopped playing popular politics and started to put our country first.   Specifically in this instance by acknowledging that a bank’s cost of doing business has increased, that clients need to share a part of this cost and that it is actually a good thing for our country as it will help to steady the property market.

Part of the problem is that Politicians and some media consistently refer to the ‘multi-billion’ dollar profits that banks generate – as if generating a profit is some great vice.   As Winston Churchill wrote all those years ago ‘It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.’

What Political criticism ever fails to recognise is the size of the capital that is required to generate ‘multi-billion dollar profits’.    Each of the top 4 banks have approximately $60 billion of shareholder funds invested – ie a total of almost $240 billion between them.   And that’s just shareholder funds – it does not recognise the many multiples of this that the banks require in assets to undertake large scale lending.

We would acknowledge that generating a $7bn profit on a small capital base would be obscene and worthy of much closer scrutiny.  But when a large bank has $60 billion of shareholders money invested alongside $100’s of billions in assets, then we would expect them to generate a reasonable return on their investment.

So a message to our politicians: get with the agenda, stop bashing the banks and recognise that by raising their lending margin, the big banks will make it easier for the RBA to further stimulate the Australian economy.


1 topic

Romano  Sala Tenna
Portfolio Manager
Katana Asset Management

Katana Asset Management was founded in September 2003 as a boutique investment management firm. Katana employs an all opportunity investment mandate being style, sector and market cap agnostic.

I would like to

Only to be used for sending genuine email enquiries to the Contributor. Livewire Markets Pty Ltd reserves its right to take any legal or other appropriate action in relation to misuse of this service.

Personal Information Collection Statement
Your personal information will be passed to the Contributor and/or its authorised service provider to assist the Contributor to contact you about your investment enquiry. They are required not to use your information for any other purpose. Our privacy policy explains how we store personal information and how you may access, correct or complain about the handling of personal information.

Comments

Sign In or Join Free to comment