I feel sorry for those caught in this Opes tragedy. The fact is...

I feel sorry for those caught in this Opes tragedy. The fact is corporations have no soul and when it collapse, you see the human faces of its victims.

Central to the tragedy is of course the directors and management of Opes who should be made fully accountable.

It is easy to say that the victims should know better. The fact that even high profile lawyers and "sophiscated investors" were trapped show that it is not as simple as it appears when we are guided by the wisdom of hindsight.

But to blame ANZ is also quite simplistic. ANZ is simply another corporation without a soul out to make money for ANZ shareholders. If it is not ANZ it would just be another of the big 4.
Some posters questioned why ANZ would not simply let Opes client redeem their shares do not fully understand the problem. As an example say a fictional Opes client Tom has $100,000 of ANZ shares and borrowed $10,000 from Opes to finance those ANZ shares. Opes had pledged the whole $100,000 of Tom's ANZ shares to ANZ and had taken a loan far greater than the $10,000 Tom borrowed from Opes. Thus if ANZ allowed Opes' clients like Tom to redeem their shares, ANZ will not be able to recover all the money ANZ loan to Opes. That then will translate into a loss for ANZ shareholders.

Are the other banks any more ethical than ANZ? Not if you have read their misdeeds and the thousands of people who were given loans or credit cards that they cant service - as shown on 4 Corners last week. So if we dont bank with ANZ where is that fictional ethical bank that we should bank with?