Foreign banks have no interest in setting up a branch network of any scale in Australia - we don't have the population to support their efforts. Why would they want to bother with the large infrastructure required to support a retail network in a country the geographical size of Australia, with just 21 mio people?
There is nothing to stop them setting up operations, as many have done, and cherry pick the low service cost sectors of the market. Or areas where they have particular expertise - eg RaboBank in agriculture.
Aside from that, the current regulations do not prohibit a foreign takeover of one of our banks. That has always been the case since the 4 pillars policy was introduced.
In fact given the current price/nta of about 2.2 for ANZ (for example) makes them pretty cheap by historical takeover valuations, which have been up around 3 plus.
