time to back up the truck, page-18

not that i take broker research all that seriously, thought this may be of interest to you guys.
Fresh Citi upgrade from sell to hold. ANZ & NAB:



Australian Banks - Sector Review: Spotlight on Impairment Charges
ANZ and NAB upgraded back to HOLD (previously SELL) - After recalibrating our impairment charges for the sector, a fresh examination of valuations prompts us to place the underperforming ANZ and NAB back to HOLD.
We continue to forecast considerable growth in impairment charges - We still anticipate a broad economic slowdown both domestically and in offshore geographies will result in rising impairment charges for Australia's major banks. We forecast a CAGR in impairment charges of between 39%-47% for each of the top 4 Australian banks between FY06-FY10.
ANZ to benefit from build-up of collective provision - ANZ's FY08e collective provision to RWA of 1% places them between 15bp-35bp better than peers. We estimate this provides an additional $750m for absorbing losses without incurring an additional hit to the P&L over the next two years.
Additional structured credit write-downs possible at ANZ and NAB - We rate these two banks as most likely to incur additional write-downs on their structured credit exposures. We estimate the $ value of further write-downs to be in the range $0.5b-$1.0b for each bank, or $0.15-$0.30 per share for ANZ and $0.20-$0.40 per share for NAB, an amount which appears to be captured in current prices.
Re-weighting, not up-weighting required - While we remain cautious on the share price outlook for the sector as a whole, we believe that the worst of the underperformance of ANZ and NAB is now past.