26 February 2004 12:00am

The disclosure by HBOS of the bank's return on equity across six divisions (retail banking, insurance & investment, business banking, corporate banking, treasury and BankWest) adds one more to the list of Europe's bigger and better run banks that have superior disclosure practices to the inadequate and world's third-best practice disclosure practiced by most Australian banks.

Even the bank that does follow the best disclosure practices in the market, ANZ Bank, won't stretch as far as reporting return on equity at a divisional level.

John McFarlane's excuse when...