Commonwealth Bank of Australia, together with Aussie Home Loans announced today that they were the preferred buyers for Wizard Home Loans, having beaten rival National Australia Bank in the race to acquire the non-bank lender from its parent GE, embarrassing NAB who only last week said it was in the lead and would close the deal.
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Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) took the extraordinary measure of issuing shares in order to pay its contractors. The step raises questions over the company’s cash position. On Friday Fortescue announced that it had issued 1.55 million ordinary shares raising A$ 3.65 million.
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Australian Banking major ANZ says it wants to take advantage of the opportunities that have arisen from the financial crisis and grow its business in Asia with the plan of becoming a “super regional” bank.
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High profile NAB executive director Ahmed Fahour’s future with the bank has seemingly been called into question after incoming NAB CEO Cameron Clyne has decided to combine the roles of Group chief executive with that of the Australian divisional head. A role previously managed by Mr. Fahour.
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Westpac, Australia’s largest bank by market capitalisation says that it intends to adhere to more prudent lending standards and scale back on lending to riskier highly leveraged companies, in order to reduce its exposure to corporate defaults.
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Commonwealth Bank of Australia announced today that it plans to place A$ 750 million in new capital with Merrill Lynch, raising the lenders Tier-1 capital ratio to 7.8 per cent.
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Two Australian financial institutions ANZ and Westpac, successfully made use of the Federal Government loan guarantee yesterday by tapping international credit markets and selling bonds to overseas investors.
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Westpac is officially Australia’s largest bank after having completed it’s A$ 17 billion acquisition of St. George last week. Westpac’s market capitalisation at the close of trading on Friday was A$ 44 billion, just above CBA’s A$ 43.1 billion market cap.
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The National Australia Bank (NAB) intends to tap the eurobond market and issue debt with a maturity of 5 years in a first of its kind bond offering guaranteed by the Commonwealth Government of Australia. The Australian banking major is said to have chosen Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch to lead the issue.
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QBE Insurance, Australia’s largest insurer announced that it would be raising capital into order to repay debt and fund foreign expansion through acquisitions. The exercise should raise A$ 2 billion and would take place in the form of a fully underwritten institutional share placement.
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