rogerb, page-18

I fully agree. The Rock acquisition was a very curious one indeed. Not satisfied with being a bit played in Tasmania, they decide to also be a bit player in Queensland. Two econonies with difficult outlooks. Who knows what's next, maybe a nice acquisition of a third rung lender in South Australia or Western Australia?

In all seriousness, to have a comparatie look, comparing the debt, capital, margin levels and leverage of MYS to any competitors, MYS loses out on all stakes. Although risk based capital levels look high, its outright leverage is poor and its capital support base is wafer thin.

But they can probably trundle along at this level for a while, eroding their capital base, running down their capex spend (banking is a very expensive business to run) and feeding the dividends to shareholders to try and keep the share price up. But clearly this can't last for ever.

My bet is the CEO will go for a breakout strategy - either massively ramp up the brokerage channel (his bio says this is his background) with risky loans and/or merge/be acquired by another also-ran. Either way its hardly going to set the world on fire and the shareprice has been reflecting this.