Westpac Saves 10% in St George Merger

Submitted by Share Trading on Thu, 18/12/2008 - 05:28.

Westpac Banking Corporation (WBC), a multinational financial service company, is expected to save $400 million by 2011 as a result of acquiring St George Bank (SGB). The bank estimated that it would gain $365 million in the next three years due to 20-25% of cost reduction and this figure has been upgraded because of the takeover. It is also expected that, about 2000 staffs will be sacked in this merge.

The banking company has announced that the group executives will be reduced from 18 to 12 and general managers from 144 to 87. A huge cut has been taken place by reducing the number of Westpac senior executives from 789 to 434. In a slide presentation the bank said that the merger integration was "proceeding well" and "on track to deliver significant benefits to customers and shareholders".

Phil Coffey, CFO of Westpac said that the final purchase price valued St George at $12.2 billion. "It's certainly been an eventful six months from the time of the announcement of the merger to the final acquisition” he said. Now that the deal was completed, Westpac was well capitalised after the bond issuance and institutional placement was carried out. He added that "We are in good shape to deal with the procyclicalities and the opportunities of the 2009 economic and business cycle”, “Two weeks into the merger and we are making good progress in fair valuing the St George balance sheet”.

WBC said; St George cost base had been reduced after the announcement of merger. The SGB’s chief transformation officer Brad Cooper said the job slices that had occurred so far did not result in all of the affected staff leaving the bank. The investors shifted to take up the shares of Commonwealth Bank of Australia so the Westpac share price fell nearly 5 per cent yesterday.

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <blockquote> <h2> <h3>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
2 + 6 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.

Top 50 Public Companies Listed on the Australian Stockmarket as at 29/05/2009

  1. BHP Billiton
  2. Westpac Banking Corporation (WBC)
  3. Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA)
  4. National Australia Bank (NAB)
  5. Telstra (TLS)
  6. ANZ
  7. News Corporation (NWS)
  8. Woolworths Limited(WOW)
  9. Woodside Petroleum Limited (WPL)
  10. Rio Tinto
  11. Westfield Group (WDC)
  12. Westfarmers Limited (WES)
  13. QBE Insurance
  14. CSL
  15. Newcrest Mining Limited (NCM)
  16. Origin Energy Limited (ORG)
  17. Santos Limited (STO)
  18. AMP Limited (AMP)
  19. Maquarie Group (MQG)
  20. Foster’s Group Limited (FGL)
  21. Brambles Limited (BXB)
  22. Fortescue Metals (FMG)
  23. Lihir Gold Limited (LGL)
  24. AXA Asia Pacific Holdings Limited (AXA)
  25. Insurance Australia Group Limited (IAG)
  26. Suncorp-Metway Limited (SUN)
  27. Orica Limited (ORI)
  28. Coal & Allied (CNA)
  29. Stockland (SGP)
  30. Leighton Holdings (LEI)
  31. Lion Nathan Ltd (LNN)
  32. Coca-Cola Amatil Limited (CCL)
  33. AGL Energy Limited (AGK)
  34. Oil Search Limited (OSH)
  35. ASX (Australian Securities Exchange)
  36. Crown (CWN)
  37. WorleyParsons (WOR)
  38. Transurban Group (TCL)
  39. Computershare Limited (CPU)
  40. Toll Holdings Limited (TOL)
  41. Energy Resources of Australia (ERA)
  42. Sonic Healthcare Limited (SHL)
  43. Tabcorp Holdings (TAH)
  44. GPT Group (GPT)
  45. Qantas Airways Limited (QAN)
  46. Amcor Limited (AMC)
  47. Incitec Pivot (IPL)
  48. Australian Foundation Investment Company (AFI)
  49. Sims Group Limited (SGM)
  50. CFS Retail Property Trust (CFX)
  51. Telecom Corporation of New Zealand (TEL)
  52. New Hope Corporation Limited (NHC)
  53. Macquarie Airports (MAP)
  54. OneSteel Limited (OST)
  55. DEXUS Property Group (DXS)
  56. Argo Investments (ARG)
  57. BlueScope Steel (BSL)
  58. Caltex Australia Limited (CTX)
  59. Metcash Trading Limited (MTS)
  60. Lend Lease Corporation Limited (LLC)
  61. Macquarie Infrastructure Group (MIG)
  62. Paladin Energy (PDN)
  63. Fletcher Building (FBU)
  64. Harvey Norman Holdings (HVN)
  65. Tatts Group (TTS)
  66. Cochlear Limited (COH)
  67. Alumina (AWC)
  68. OZ Minerals (OZL)
  69. Arrow Energy (AOE)
  70. Fairfax Media Limited (FXJ)
  71. Nufarm Limited (NUF)
  72. Aquarius Platinum (AQP)
  73. Washington H Soul Pattison & Company (SOL)
  74. Boral (BLD)
  75. Felix Resources (FLX)
  76. Equinox Minerals (EQN)
  77. Platinum Asset Management Limited (PTM)
  78. CSR
  79. SP AusNet (SPN)
  80. Primary Health Care (PRY)
  81. Mirvac Group (MGR)
  82. Ramsay Health Care (RHC)
  83. Reece Australia (REH)
  84. Billabong International Limited (BBG)
  85. Aneka Tambang (Persero) Tbk (Pt) (ATM)
  86. Sino Gold Mining (SGX)
  87. Aristocrat Leisure (ALL)
  88. James Hardie Industries N.V. (JHX)
  89. Bendigo and Adelaide Bank Limited (BEN)
  90. David Jones (DJS)
  91. Goodman Fielder (GFF)
  92. Centamin Egypt (CNT)
  93. United Group (UGL)
  94. Consolidated Media Holding (CMJ)
  95. ABB Grain (ABB)
  96. Downer EDI Limited (DOW)
  97. Auckland International Airport (AIA)
  98. Brickworks (BKW)
  99. Australian Worldwide Exploration (AWE)
  100. Duet Group (DUE)
  101. Commonwealth Property Office Fund (CPA)
  102. Adelaide Brighton (ABC)
  103. APA Group (APA)
  104. Bank of Queensland (BOQ)
  105. SKY Network Television (SKT)
  106. JB Hi-Fi (JBH)
  107. Seek (SEK)
  108. Iluka Resources Limited (ILU)
  109. Macquarie Communications Infrastructure Group (MCG)
  110. Milton Corporation (MLT)
  111. Singapore Telecommunications (SGT)
  112. SKYCITY Entertainment Group (SKC)
  113. Extract Resources (EXT)
  114. Riversdale Mining (RIV)
  115. Perpetual Limited (PPT)
  116. Whitehaven Coal (WHC)
  117. Aquila Resources (AQA)
  118. Macarthur Coal (MCC)
  119. Challenger Financial Services Group Limited (CGF)
  120. Fisher & Paykel Healthcare Corporation (FPH)
  121. Ansell Limited (ANN)
  122. Spark Infrastructure Group (SKI)
  123. Transfield Services (TSE)
  124. Karoon Gas Australia (KAR)
  125. Seven Network Limited (SEV)
  126. Campbell Brothers Limited (CPB)
  127. Energy World Corporation (EWC)
  128. ING Office Fund (IOF)
  129. Infigen Energy (IFN)
  130. Healthscope (HSP)
  131. Asciano Group (AIO)
  132. TOWER Australia Group (TAL)
  133. Navitas (NVT)
  134. Ten Network Holdings (TEN)
  135. Wotif.com Holdings (WTF)
  136. AngloGold Ashanti (AGG)
  137. Austar United Communications Limited (AUN)
  138. IOOF Holdings (IFL)
  139. Air New Zealand Limited (AIZ)
  140. Linc Energy (LNC)
  141. Warehouse Group (WHS)
  142. Macquarie Office Trust (MOF)
  143. Sigma Pharmaceuticals Limited (SIP)
  144. Zimplats Holdings (ZIM)
  145. IRESS Market Technology Limited (IRE)
  146. Monadelphous Group (MND)
  147. Silex Systems (SLX)
  148. Western Areas NL (WSA)
  149. West Australian Newspapers Holdings Limited (WAN)
  150. Centennial Coal Company (CEY)