Posts tagged as:

ANZ bank

Short Sellers Don’t Send Companies Broke, Bad Business Does

by Kris Sayce on November 27, 2008

The short selling debate just won’t go away. It has almost reached hysterical proportions. The recent ban on short selling and massive fall in the stock market should have proved once and for all that short selling does not cause stock markets to fall.

The investment director of 452 Capital, Peter Morgan has had a letter published in today’s Australian Financial Review. He makes to main points.

The first is his disbelief that fund managers would lend out stock to investors who they know will use it to short sell. He particularly has a beef with superannuation funds that do this.

[click to continue...]

ANZ Bank Writes Off $1.9 Billion

by Kris Sayce on October 23, 2008

There’s a phrase going around at the moment. Something about a pig wearing lipstick. The gist of it - quite cruelly - is that pigs are still ugly even if a Revlon “Super Lustrous” lipstick is applied to the kisser.

We think we can safely say that the ANZ Bank [ASX: ANZ] profit results this morning fall into the ‘pig in lipstick’ class.

The notes to the results try and tell us that it was a “solid underlying result” in a “difficult environment.” Operating income was up 4%. OK, maybe that is solid. But operating expenses were up 10% which wiped out the income gain. Not so solid…

[click to continue...]