This is part of what concerns me with the Announcements... If...

This is part of what concerns me with the Announcements... If the dividend isn't going to be cut then you would expect Shayne to remove any doubt in investors minds but instead he dances around the subject.

I'm expecting it to be reduced myself.

-Andrew Cornell-
Leaving the idea of asset quality, the other thing that investors
obviously have a strong interest in are your funding costs and the
outlook for dividends. Can you expand on that at all?

-Shayne Elliott-
Well we have certainly seen, and as I said, it’s been pretty widely
reported that funding costs for banks and corporates that borrow in the
capital markets have risen, and risen in a fairly material way. And
you’ve seen that some of that has meant that there has been a repricing
in certain parts of the economy. So that’s absolutely real and
we’ll see where that plays out. In terms of dividend, banks have a
number of levers that they’re controlling and obviously we need to
maintain our revenue momentum and that really generates lots of
organic capital, we have the ability to manage our costs really tightly
and of course be really efficient with the allocation of our capital.
So in an environment which is a little bit slower, in an environment
where we start to see that credit cycle turn, we have to be really
vigilant around that capital and around our credit management but
also be really tightly managed on costs and that’s exactly what we’re
doing.