Superbank reviewing its New Zealand business

• Tweet

St Georges Bank says its earnings momentum is on track and that the bank is in good shape in Australia, but is reviwing its New Zealand operations - Superbank.

Wednesday, December 21st 2005, 3:08AM

St Georges chief executive Gail Kelly said the New Zealand business was under review, prompted by its expectation that its "break-even point" would extend past 2006.

One of the issues dragging on the outlook is that the economic environmnet is "quite tough" and that there is "significant compression" on margins, particularly in home lending.

"Clearly, as a result of this economic environment, that break-even point extends a little and, as a consequence, you undertake a review," she said.

Kelly said the review would look at what "the best next step is for the venture", including an exit.

Superbank is a joint venture between St Georges and Foodstuffs. Its two main products are home loans and its SuperSaver online savings account.

Superbank lost $5 million in the last financial year and was tipped to break even in 2006.

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name:
Your email:	Not displayed to the public
Comment:
Comments to Good Returns go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved.

Anti-spam verification:

Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.