OurFinanceBlogs.com - Australian Finance Blogging Community

Banks’ strategic behaviours unleashing waves of job cuts

Posted by cij on Dec 19th, 2008

Since the credit crisis first erupted 15 months ago, the problem was mainly confined to the financial side of the economy. Today, we are seeing signs of the crisis spreading to the real economy in far-flung countries like Australia. As Australian banks expected to sack staff reported,
Jobs are disappearing at the four major retail banks, [...]

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Zimbabwe’s central banker in praise of Fed

Posted by cij on Dec 1st, 2008

Marc Faber just released his latest market commentary report. In that report, we learnt that the US Federal Reserve had received an unexpected praise from the highly esteemed Dr. G. Gono, the chairman of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe:
As Monetary Authorities, we have been humbled and have taken heart in the realization that some leading [...]

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Bank on it: Higher Fees are Here to Stay

Posted by andyfvp on Nov 25th, 2008

The WSJ personal finance section had a timely piece on how banks are passing on or increasing transaction fees for its customers to offset mounting losses from other parts of their business ravaged by the credit crisis. According to a Bankrate study, the average costs of checking-account fees, ATM surcharges, bounced-check fees and monthly service [...]

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Effects of retreating foreign banks in Australia

Posted by cij on Nov 24th, 2008

Recently, we found this news report in the mainstream media:
A significant retreat of foreign banks from the Australian corporate lending market is under way, which will leave the “Big Four” domestic institutions scrambling to pick up the slack in a mass refinancing of company debt due to happen over the next 12 months.
…
According to research [...]

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This is the Bottom of the Market - We Hope

Posted by Debbie on Nov 14th, 2008

During the last few months we’ve shamelessly written that we believe the market has bottomed out. But just like the patient who is on life support, it is too early to tell whether it really will improve from here or whether it will have another cardiac arrest.
The only sector of the market we have been [...]

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Fill Up Before Friday

Posted by Debbie on Oct 20th, 2008

It was bound to come at some point and they didn’t disappoint. I must make a mental note to fill up the car with petrol before this Friday.
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (that’s OPEC to you and me) have decided to reschedule their extraordinary meeting from the 18th November to the 24th October. [...]

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The Bailout Fails

Posted by admin on Sep 30th, 2008

The bailout was back - for about 24 hours or so. But last night the US House of Representatives voted against socialising its financial crisis. The score was 205 for, 228 against. Despite Hank Paulson’s confidence, all those foot-notes added to the bailout over the weekend came to nothing.
And now we have a serious panic. [...]

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Boom in Asian Economies Set to Benefit Australia

Posted by Debbie on Sep 21st, 2008

This is all a very roundabout way of saying the global economy is destined to take an even bigger shift across the Pacific towards Asia. The urbanization of Asia nations and growing wealth - remember, they’ve been saving while the West has been spending - of individuals will compensate for lower demand out of North [...]

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There Should be No Surprises about Australian Financial Woes

Posted by The Fundamental Analyst on Aug 4th, 2008

There should be no surprises about the recent writedowns, profit warnings and rising bad debts from Australian financial institutions. For those paying attention to events in both the U.S and Europe it was really only a matter of time until Australian financial companies started to own up to problems of their own.
However, Australian financials, particularly [...]

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Citigroup Pays Another Visit to the Confessional

Posted by The Fundamental Analyst on Jun 20th, 2008

On a conference call on Thursday Citigroup CFO Gary Crittenden put to rest the idea that things are getting better at Citigroup anytime soon. From Bloomberg;
Citigroup Shares Fall on Writedown, Loss Forecast

“We will continue to have substantial additional marks on our subprime exposure this quarter,” Crittenden said on the call, which was sponsored by Deutsche [...]

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