OPINION: A quarter-century after taking over Bank of Melbourne and 14 years after buying St George Bank, Westpac is allowing customers of those banks to use its branches in a move towards simplification.
Included in Westpac Banking Corp’s latest market update is a significant change in strategy that is long overdue and ought to be welcomed by shareholders.
“This is a big step for us today because we remove some of the duplication out of the bank ... the multi-bank issues as opposed to the multi-brand issues.” Westpac’s woeful sharemarket performance over the past five years – its share price has underperformed the Commonwealth Bank of Australia by 25 per cent – can be sheeted home to inferior technology systems.
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