all true Ant, you cant over a trail like this, officers of the court will ultimately tell the truth , the simple truth is that ANZ lost control of this division , they failed to detect that relationships built up over decades within ANZ would turn toxic and incestuous when the players moved outside of ANZ, truth be known they probably had little knowledge of the depth of these relationships .
Broadening the picture, stepping back, Opes appears to have been running a stock manipulation racket across a broad section of the ASX, on the pretense of margin lending business folks were induced to lend their stocks into a pool where these stocks were passed to cartels of related parties to churn and short stocks siphoning off profits that flowed back through the consorted and I suspect criminal parties .
What has occurrred reflects more a mafia racket than a stock broking business and what Blumberg and others are alleging is that many ANZ officers were the beneficiaries and participants in these rackets.
To be sure ANZ as an organization may have been unaware of the intent and ramifications of its employees actions and was not a party to the racket as a corporate entity but it cannot escape the accountability it authorized officers actions.
In many ways its similiar to the classic "rogue trader" situation, except in this case ANZ appears to have had an entire "rogue division" . Further I suggest that the ANZ culture has failed to quell or manage rogue behavior by managers and that culture over time through its failure to control such behavior has offered tacit passive support to such behavior.
Mike Smith has an enormous job in front of him, what he faces is in many ways the same as institutional corruption, that is the toxic culture, processes, policies, systems and attitudes are so embedded and of such long standing that they need to be taken out branch and root (with a large shovel of soil). He is facing a form of institutional cancer than can be given no quarter or mercy.
The next few months will see if hes up to the task
ANZ Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Held
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