Some pre-results release house cleaning from the ANZ on Friday.
Earlier in the week it was Westpac with some balance sheet tidying up ahead of next week’s interim results, on Friday it was the ANZ with a rather larger amount.
Westpac revealed $582 million of existing and new write-downs offset by $306 million in gains from one off items such as the profit on the listing of Coinbase.
Friday ANZ’s announcement revealed a much larger number – $817 million – made up of various impairments, write-downs, and customer refund charges.
The biggest impact will come from a $251 million write-down on the goodwill in its share investment business, as a result of the unit being put up for sale, the bank said.
It also warned of a $135 million hit from the impairment of goodwill in ANZ’s minority stake in AmBank, a Malaysian lender that has been embroiled in a long-running corruption scandal.
The goodwill impact announced on Friday is on top of a $212 million profit impact from the scandal that ANZ revealed in March.
ANZ on Friday also announced a further $108 million in customer compensation charges, and a $63 million hit made up of restructuring charges and smaller impacts from divestments.
Including the previously announced AmBank hit, and a $48 million class action settlement, ANZ said the total impact was a $817 million hit to its half-year cash profit.
The ANZ said the drain on its cash profit will be the equivalent to losing 5 basis points of top tier capital in what is more like a jumble sale rather than a quick tidy up.
So will the NAB join Westpac and the ANZ in announcing its own clean up ahead of its results release next Thursday?
