Banking and finance briefs: National Property Trust reviews management options

1. NAB gets support from AXA AP chairman - National Australia Bank's attempt to buy AXA Asia Pacific has been helped by the wealth manager's chairman who  says he disagrees with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's decision to reject the A$13.3 billion bid. AXA AP's chairman Rick Allert also suggested NAB's attempts to try and win back support from the ACCC were gathering momentum, the Age reports.

Mr Allert said he was surprised the ACCC had knocked back NAB. In its ruling in April, the ACCC said it was concerned that competition and innovation would be harmed if NAB and AXA AP combined their wealth platforms. ''We were surprised that they thought that was of sufficient merit to be anti-competitive,'' Mr Allert said of AXA AP's North wealth platform product, which remains at the heart of the ACCC's concerns.

2. Under fire National Property Trust reviews management - Jim Sherwin, chairman of the St Laurence controlled company that manages the National Property Trust, says "considerable work" has been done on potential changes to the management structure of the listed property trust. In an NZX release Sherwin said the review of the management contract included whether the management rights could be acquired by the National Property Trust itself or for the shares in the manager to be offered for sale.

We have already undertaken considerable work on these matters and we will be covering our findings at the Annual Meeting on 30 July 2010.

That meeting will be followed by a special meeting called by unitholders led by David Cushing who are demanding the manager, the National Property Trust Ltd, be sacked.

As we announced on 30 April, we would like to reiterate that St Laurence's receivership has no effect on the continuity of the management of the Trust, the value of the Trust's assets or the underlying value of the units. Perpetual Trust Limited (St Laurecnce’s trustee) has indicated to the Manager that the companies providing management services to NPT are not affected by the receivership of St Laurence and the Manager will continue to provide services to the National Property Trust. It is therefore very much business as usual.

3. Deloitte to probe Fiji Provident Fund deals - Forensic accountants from Deloitte Australia have arrived in Fiji to investigate controversial past deals by Fiji Provident Fund, the Fiji Sun reports. The fund recently wrote off F$18 million from the Momi Bay project into which Bridgecorp sank NZ$106.6 million which the finance company's receivers don't expect to recover. 4. Aussie banks pay almost A$40 billion in retail deposit interest - Australia's major banks coughed up A$39.89 billion to customers in retail deposit interest last year. However, The Australian notes, this was well down on the A$60.19 billion paid up in 2008.

The Reserve Bank's move to slash rates to historic lows after the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers in September 2008 was attributed to the banks paying customers almost $20bn less for their deposits. The major saving for the banks occurred even though each of the institutions have argued that a retail deposits war broke out to reduce their reliance on volatile offshore funding markets. The interest rate on some savings products, especially term deposits, was higher than the mortgage rates for the banks for the first time in two decades.

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