Commonwealth Bank of Australia

One of the leading Australian financial institutions- Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), which provides various types of financial service to companies, small businesses and individuals is about to extend its China Life Insurance join venture operation in an attempt to cover the national market after one of the major Chinese banks (the fifth largest one of the country) took as much as 51 percent share in the business.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) released its 1H09 reports yesterday. The bank posted a 16 per cent drop in first-half profit as bad corporate debts linked to the global financial crisis hit the bottom line. Bad debts soared nearly five-fold to more $1.5-billion. As flagged in Commonwealth's surprise profit upgrade earlier this month, the bank's operating performance was sound, highlighted by a 20 per cent increase in banking income due to fee rises and volume and market share gains.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has announced that it will earn $2 billion profit in the first half of 2009. The company said that it would outperform market expectations by as much as 20 per cent with interim cash profit as large as $2 billion. The ASX requires listed companies to make public any information which substantially differs from consensus earnings estimates. CBA's announcement comes ahead of its interim results which are scheduled for February 11th.

Commonwealth Bank (CBA), the largest bank in Australia, defends its highly ranked executives in breach of disclosure rules during the issue of $2 billion capital raising. CBA disagreed by saying that, rules were not broken when it warned a small group of shareholders regarding the bad debt raise before a public announcement. The bank said that the information was not materially significant so there was no need to warn the public earlier.