Edited: Antony Currie
Too late to save the day
New Zealand's new deputy prime minister has a harsh message for his Australian cousins across the Tasman Sea. Foreign ownership of banks - the Aussies have bought up virtually all the Kiwis' institutions - is not welcome.
"We are in danger of re-colonization if we are not careful," says John Anderton. "The irony is that 100 years ago the Bank of New Zealand was opened up to get away from the control of Australian bankers not interested in New Zealand. Now we have sold practically every one of our banks to Australia."
This could cause some conflict within the government: Anderton is leader of the Alliance party which is the minority partner in the coalition with the Labour party. And it was Labour, specifically its former finance minister Roger Douglas, which encouraged banking consolidation and selling out to foreigners in the 1980s. Bank of New Zealand is owned by National Australia Bank, Trust Bank of New Zealand has been subsumed by a merger with Westpac, and Aussie bank ANZ is the third member of New Zealand's big four. Only National Bank of New Zealand escaped the clutches of the Aussies, and that's because it's owned by the whingeing poms at Lloyds TSB, which has also bought Countrywide Bank.
Angry Anderton searching for ways to reverse the trends in New Zealand banking, is promoting a return to community-based banks, the loss of which he equates with the loss of services like schools and hospitals.
In mid-December, he opened a community banking facility in Palmerston, a town with a population of 800 in the South Island province of Otago - best known for the adventure resort Queenstown, home of bungee jumping. The town has been deprived of bank branches and automatic teller machines.
Anderton attacked Westpac for pulling out of Palmerston. A Westpac Trust source says the bank is "committed to New Zealand" but adds ominously that the company is looking into trans-Tasman synergies: "Though that doesn't mean we'll move everything to Sydney." Anderton will no doubt be relieved.
Alex Mathias
The bonds of humanity
It is known as the green heart of Italy for its forests. It is famous for the many basilicas that adorn its landscape as well as the several saints, like Saint Francis of Assisi or Santa Chiara, who were born and lived there. But Umbria, a small region smack in the middle of the Italian peninsula, has never been a player in the financial markets...until now.
Its debut bond has changed all that. In December the region signed a debt programme to raise e2.6 billion [$2.62 billion] on the international capital markets, becoming the European local authority with the largest programme outstanding.
The money will be raised through a series of Eurobond issues in the next two years and with it Umbria will continue the reconstruction works it needs after the earthquake of September 1997. Part of the funds will be devoted to restoring historical and artistic buildings such as the St. Francis Basilica in Assisi, where work has already begun. But the bulk will be used to provide homes to 3,500 families still living in containers.
The bonds will be guaranteed by the L6,500 billion [$3.42 billion] that the Italian government has allocated in the budget plans for the next 20 years, but also by Umbria's solid financial performance. "We are one of the few [Italian] regions that are not in deficit," says Bruno Bracalente, president of Umbria and professor of economic statistics at the University of Perugia.
A 20-year e600 million floating rate note launched in late December is the first issue in the programme. Chase, Depfa Europe and three Italian banks acted as arrangers.
The Umbria bond was different, according the arrangers, and had a humanitarian allure to it. "I don't want to be rhetorical but I think we can say that this time finance was really at the people's disposal," says Alessandro Mitrovich, general director at Chase Italia in Milan. "It is a great feeling to see something being physically built with the money you raise in the market." Professor-president Bracalente puts it in metaphysical terms: "It is materializing the immateriality of finance."
Luciano Mondellini
Warburg forever
Switzerland's UBS, plagued for months by rumours that it is considering selling Warburg Dillon Read, has decided to show its enduring commitment to its investment-banking unit by changing the name. Again.
The former British merchant bank has had more guises than the Scarlet Pimpernel. It's masqueraded under four names in five years. Good-old SG Warburg gave way to SBC Warburg in 1995. Two years later Dillon Read was suffixed after SBC bought the US boutique. Then the prefix disappeared after SBC merged with UBS in 1998, leaving the name as Warburg Dillon Read.
Now it's time for a rebranding to affirm UBS's commitment to its investment banking activities. Or so goes the corporate line. And the new incarnation? UBS Warburg. It's part of CEO Marcel Ospel's desire to show that UBS is a "global integrated investment services firm," as he told his Japan staff at a meeting late last year.
And what better rebranding than to give it the same prefix treatment ministered to all the other divisions, such as UBS Private Banking, UBS Private Equity and UBS Brinson. But that all happened back in 1998. Why leave out WDR for so long? Perhaps because the Dillon Read brand was so central to the bank's US effort.
But the absence of the UBS prefix made it appear that the parent bank was less than committed to keeping Warburg. Also, the latest name change might help US investors better to identify the core parts of the group: UBS has filed with the US securities and exchanges commission to list on the New York Stock Exchange, probably later in the year.
But right now the firm's US staff are more concerned about the rumours that it intends to move an additional 2,000 employees up to Stamford. Staff in the New York office are so attached to Manhattan eateries.
Antony Currie
