It’s always amusing to watch elites blow their top. From The Australian:
ANZ Bank chief executive Mike Smith has hit back at JPMorgan and its analysis of the bank’s super-regional strategy, urging the US giant to look in its own backyard where it is negotiating a $US13 billion ($13.4bn) settlement with US regulators.
…The former HSBC banker said he “absolutely” would have been happy when he unveiled the strategy in 2007 if he had known that ANZ would be in its current position. “Any banker you talk to anywhere in the world thinks what we’ve done in Asia is remarkable,” Mr Smith told The Australian.
“It seems to be only the sell-side analysts in Australia who don’t get it. Maybe (JPMorgan’s) equity analyst would like to give advice to their own senior management,” he said.
For what it’s worth, the ANZ strategy makes plenty of sense to me. Short run returns in Australian banks are fine so long as the music keeps playing. Presumably JPMorgan has heard of asset diversification.
Having said that, I’m pretty sure the JPMorgan analyst in question is not Jamie Dimon.
And for a trip down a sub-woofing memory lane, enjoy Frankie Goes to Hollywood!
