Three banking industry exits in three weeks in Australia – or it will be three when, and if, the weary ME board today or tonight reaches consensus with their industry funds owners on the upcoming change in control.
Thursday, seemingly, is the day the delighted buyer and the rejoicing vendors and the ME board will pitch the terms, explain each side’s strategy and visions, and their records as stewards of other people’s money.
It’s all a little perplexing, to be frank, yet somehow reformist, this rush for the exits in Australian banking. If, that is, patently anti-competitive industry M&A and the elimination of a sub-scale, worn out disruptor from the finance sector can be rationalised and the ACCC persuaded to clear the merger of ME with an established, bigger name.
But let’s face it, the post land boom, post railway craze Melbourne banking crisis of the 1890s is the only parallel.
It's almost a rebirth of the Melbourne banking bust of April and May 1893, the rush for safety a leading insider indicator of the banking peril, even the horrors ahead.
The swing factor as the weary ME board confers today with their advisers from Macquarie on the final offers will be the probability of a neat, low hassle and speedy exit.
If there are doubters on the ME share register or dissidents on Jim Evans’ board, they’re keeping mum now, with all eyes on ME selecting a buyer that appeals to the defenders of public value at the competition watchdog.
Among the long list of reasons the market and an aggressive, out-of-character BOQ are deemed front-runner to be named the new controller of ME Bank tomorrow is the front-running by ME’s advisers from Macquarie and the collective grey hairs running industry funds focussed on assessing the ACCC’s handling of the application from the favoured buyer.
On the eve of the board’s decision, ANZ’s fair-value bid on ME is widely viewed a non-starter, though few think the same about NAB’s sweetheart takeover for 86 400.
Yesterday, with the AFR’s Street Talk column seemingly definitive that “Bendigo and Adelaide Bank dropped out of the auction last week”, the ASX relief rally on Bendigo stretched BEN shares by 11 per cent to A$10.56.
(For analysis on BEN’s first half financials, and the Homesafe factor in the pop on the share price see "Bendigo profits from care and volume")
Marnie Baker, Bendigo’s managing director, dead-panned Banking Day’s quest for a meaningful comment on the bank’s supposed loss of interest in ME and exit from the sale process.
“I’ve read the media clippings” Baker said, one means of neither confirming nor denying, or maybe meant to confirm.
Bendigo and ME have a long, long history and nearly did merge in the long lost days of the GFC.
Might Bendigo be bluffing and Baker be brazen, and the ASX influencers be all wrong on BEN and ME and BOQ yesterday?
Yeah, no; and it will be no surprise if a knockout final offer from private equity is tabled to convince the board of ME Bank the exit by the bank’s