phillip thomas explains all, page-31

To my mind the idea that this will take 3 years to blow over is laughable.

OK, sit down and imagine you are ANZ. Deloittes is the auditor (which PT reasonably reckons are club-footed ham-fisted illiterate Polacks). ANZ can scan through the shares it gave Opes to play with and ask a few questions of Deloitte:
- which stocks, in your opinion, my Polack ham-fisted auditor, do you think are at most risk of going tits up if funding arrangements get even more dicey than now?
- which stocks are currently experiencing some financial difficulties?
- which stocks have large amounts of debt?
- better yet, find us a stock where we can clear 80M shares for little loss into a very liquid market, in order to recver our position and reduce the downside exposure?

To my mind, ADY could be flicking red flags up all over the place if those questions are asked of Deloittes by ANZ. Remember, I bailed on Tuesday because of the less than exciting half-yearly reports.

If you don't think ANZ is tetchy, remember ANZ has billions of dollars in margin lending - a fair % of the ASX's estimated $60-80Bn of leveraged shares. In a climate where any bad debt sends a bank into a tail-spin the faster ANZ can close its risks down, the better for ANZ.

PT is right; there's no immediate need for ANZ to sell. Its in with the auditors. Auditors can take their time. But ANZ still owns the shares, not Deloittes. ANZ can, and most likely WILL bail the majority of speccy, liquid stocks before the bear market drags them lower (on an ASX indexed basis). The longer ANZ waits, the worse its losses.

ADY itself may not have loans with ADY. But ANZ has some unquantified number of shares (anyone care to look up the ANZ Nominee position?) which, as said above, it owns and can sell at whim. Without reference to anyone.

PT may have $9.4M of shares now. but Eddie Groves had nigh on $250M worth of ABC stock and now his most prized possession is his Armani suit. PT's portfolio could evaporate overnight if the rot takes hold (and remember; bad half yearly). So take that "write a cheque" with a grain of salt. We'd hope to see him write a cheque while his 10c oppies are in the money...and to answer Troubleshooter, yes ANZ ons PT's shares the way I read it, meaning he can't sell out. Or write a cheque, because as he's said, Deloittes will take 3 years to get back to PT and say "you owe us $X".

Good luck to holders. Blumberg obviously quit because Opes was exploding. But now its out of the control of the directors the way I see it, and in with Australia's most margin-exposed bank, in the midst of a credit crisis, in a stock with equivocal survivability.

Ciao.