Australian mentality: "We need to cut costs so we can maintain the dividend."
American mentality: "We need to grow revenue so we can grow our dividend."
Investing in Australian banks, bar CBA and Macquarie is a fool's game.
This bank (Westpac) is so bad, so awful, that it hasn't hit an ATH in about 7 years. In fact, it's trading at where it did in the mid-2007s, all while failing to provide shareholders a stable income.
Anyone who decides to invest in Westpac is just making an awful, awful decision and losing sight of the big picture to get a few "frankies" in the bag. I hope that mirage of that big fat juicy divvy doesn't detract you from an investment that will win in the longer term.
An awful, awful investment, and today's announcement is a culmination of Westpac's failure in investing in its business and so the easy and cheap answer for this cheap and third-tier and uninspiring, visionless management team is to cut costs so they can meet their targets and get paid bonuses.
Westpac
CBA
Royal Bank of Canada
JP Morgan Chase
(20min delay)