"You clearly didn't follow the Royal Commission. There was wilfull avoidance of required disclosure laws. Its one thing to argue valuations etc on these stocks, but when people like you deny blatant evidence. Not only WBC, CBA etc were all shown to be clearly guilty of blatantly ignoring anti money laundering laws."
I followed not only the Royal Commission, but also its findings and recommendations.
That there were no convictions, or recommendations for criminal prosecution indicates to me that these were acts of omission and not active and intention breaches of the law.
And I'll wager that if we had Commissions of Inquiry into any large enterprises we would find similar extents of lack of oversight in relation to some or other aspect of those companies.
"Westpac failed to monitor/report 262 clear examples of money transfers that fit the mould of child exploitation transactions. Where is your limit of tolerance Madamswer?"
Please don't gas-light me by inferring that I'm indifferent to child exploitation, which is what your loaded question does.
My limit of tolerance is as low is practicably possible, but 262 transfers out of hundreds of millions of monthly transactions that a large bank such as WBC facilitates is statistically meaningless. Part of me is certain that there are lot more transactions involving nefarious parties that banking systems globally (along with government agencies) fail to detect.
Would it be better if there were zero amount of such cases?
Unambiguously - absolutely.
Should major institutions continually strive for fewer such cases?
Unambiguously - absolutely.
But should I not invest in any business unless it can demonstrate zero error rate?
No.
Because were that constraint to form part of my investment process, I would never be in a position to buy shares in any company whatsoever.
"I've worked in finance all my life and time after time management encourages, nay almost pressures staff to turn a blind eye where they think its profitable and are ready to use them as scapegoats the moment regulators get a sniff."
I'll match your "anec-data" with my own: I too worked in finance all my life and I - along with all of my colleagues - were trained half-yearly in updated governance and compliance practices and where informed and reminded about whistleblower policies and whistleblower protection.
As for Westpac specifically, since I have been a shareholder - which is only relatively recently - the company has had in place what I consider to be a comprehensive whistleblower offering for all its stakeholders, including provision for anonymous reporting of irregularities or suspected breaches:
It certainly is superior to the whisteblower protocols that exist in every other company in which I am a shareholder and if it is not best-of-breed, then I suspect it comes very close to it.
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WBC Price at posting:
$25.97 Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
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