National Australia Bank Limited

NAB - The market continues to give NAB the thumbs up for making tough decisions that are aimed at ensuring the bank remains internationally competitive and correctly positioned to capitalise on the irreversible move towards electronic banking. It has just been announced that as many as 5000 jobs will be cut as part of a restructure that will cost $315 million and be booked as an abnormal loss in the current financial year. Yes, it's imperative that the banks position themselves to remain internationally competitive while moving their focus away from the declining branch network and towards electronic banking. However, the real question is, how deep will the restructuring cut into the organisational structure and profits in coming years and will 1998 will be the first year in many that an increase in profit has not been recorded by NAB? Allegations of overcharging by its European operation's are the last thing the company needs at the moment. We will conduct a full review of the big four banks in our next issue.