Naked Among Cannibals: What really happens inside Australian banks

Front Cover
Allen & Unwin, Feb 1, 2001 - Business & Economics - 320 pages
Australian banks are riding high. Shareholder profits are at record levels. Senior executives are on champagne salaries and business has never been so good.

But in the suburbs and in the bush, hundreds of branches have closed, many thousands of jobs have been lost and millions of customers are disillusioned, all in the name of banking reform.

This is the story of one bank, the State Bank of New South Wales, and its sale to the Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Society. But it is a tale that is universal. It is about corporate greed in the banking industry, transfer pricing, funny money, policy making unashamedly calculated to maximise profits, speculation and manipulation, boardroom powerplays, and contentious practices designed to hold bank customers captive. And it is about the mating calls between banks and fees, fees and still more fees.

Our worst suspicions are confirmed. We are all naked among the cannibals that are the Australian banks.
 

Selected pages

Contents

1 The biggest bank heist of all time
1
2 From showdown to lowdown
8
3 The trusting sleep of the innocent
14
4 The end of the other state banks
28
5 Reinventing the Bank
37
6 Management by committee
49
7 Pricing Committee and barefaced effrontery
63
8 From revered to reviled
86
14 All go at Altco
170
15 Shades of Gray in Treasury
182
16 Give me the child and Ill give you the man
199
17 Show me the money
212
18 First State first rate
229
19 Going broke in broking
236
highest bidders not welcome
244
21 Cash for comments
264

9 A muchloved borrower
111
10 Funny Money
128
11 Once were customers
141
12 An element of the fantastic
157
13 Transfer pricing rules OK
162
22 Cries from the heart
269
Notes
292
Index
301
Back cover
307
Copyright

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About the author (2001)

Graham Hand was Deputy Treasurer of the State Bank from 1988 to 1994, after eleven years at a major Australian bank. He became Managing Director of Treasury at NatWest Australia before retiring in 1996 to write full-time. He still acts as a consultant to the banking industry and writes for Euromoney magazine.

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