Denver,I wouldnt be so smug with your comments there about...

Denver,

I wouldnt be so smug with your comments there about shifty tax avoidance schemes and who is posting where.

Let me remind you that Bendigo was so clever it took on more than $0.5 billion dollars worth of these MIS loans with a third of them now in default. Moreover, there is a legal case outstanding to determine the validity of those loans in the first place. We will let the courts decide that one.

But I will gurantee you that more than the $50 million provided for in bad debts for these loans will actually be written off (remember the first provision was $20m). I actually beleive that BEN has to had to be conservative in bad debt provisions because it would be self fulfilling if the provision was higher less people would pay.

The total exposure is about 1.5 times last weeks profit and the bad debts are circa 20% of profits.

The irony is, these loans were secured only by the dodey investments to which you refer, which means if this goes pear shaped, you as a shareholder of BEN will end up owning a whole lot of them. My point is BEN was equally as shifty in trying to make a buck out of that industry and has come unstuck

For the record, I like BEN for its community focus and being an alternate to the monolopy of the big 4 but it has made a stupid corporate decision to take on these loans and is it is going to pay for the mistake - just a matter of how much. Again, the overall exposure material in the context of the overall bank and the issue is not going to go away any time soon. Therfore, it is relevant to post views on this topic for this stock.

For the record, as a HC member I (and others) will post appropriate comments where I like on this site.