CBA: one pillar to rule them all
There aren't four pillars in Australia's banking industry. One bank dominates and leads them all.
Earlier this month the Commonwealth Bank, Australia’s largest and most profitable financial institution, delivered a record $10 billion annual profit, up 6% on a year earlier.
The latest annual profits for the other three of the Four Pillars were $7.1 billion for National Australia Bank, $5.3 billion for Westpac Banking Corp and $6.5 billion for ANZ Banking Group.
It’s quite symbolic that CBA reports a June year result when the other three of the Pillars report three months later, September years. Historically that was so the big banks could factor the June financial year corporate performance of their customers into their results when reporting took longer.
But as a former government entity, only IPOed in the 90s, CBA has always had a government financial year.
