bankwest, page-11

Have to agree this is absolutely nothing more than panic

HBOS the current owners of Bankwest are in trouble yes, but BWA is a completely seperate enitity

Prior to lehmans folding they were in talks with Barclays, with Barclays looking at taking them over. Barclays pulled out of talks on the Sunday, the Monday Lehamns went into bankruptcy, on the Tuesday Barckays came back and cherry picked some of the good parts of Lehamns and bought them at a cheaper price.

BWA is one of the better assets HBOS has, which is evidenced by the fact both the NAB and CBA have been rumoured to be looking at the bank as a potential purchase and CBA are now reported to be in exclusive talks. Something CBA would be very unlikely to be doing if BWA itself was in danger and about to colapse.

HBOS may very well end up being another casualty of this current crisis, but there is every likely hood BWA will still be around either in its current form as a wholely owned seperate enitity or merged into another bank.

If factors in Australia got to the point that BWA failed, the same factors would be putting all other banks at risk as well.