Accountability and board functionality: National Australia Bank's experience Thomson, Dianne and Jain, Ameeta 2006, Accountability and board functionality: National Australia Bank's experience, in Banking and securities markets: convergence, innovation and regulation, Melbourne Centre for Financial Studies, Melbourne, Vic., pp. 1-28. Attached Files Name Description MIMEType Size Downloads Title Accountability and board functionality: National Australia Bank's experience Author(s) Thomson, Dianne orcid.org/0000-0002-8189-7854 Jain, Ameeta orcid.org/0000-0001-7912-0539 Conference name Financial Services Institute of Australasia. Conference (11th: 2006: Melbourne, Vic.) Conference location Melbourne, Vic. Conference dates 25-26 Sep. 2006 Title of proceedings Banking and securities markets: convergence, innovation and regulation Editor(s) Mitchell, David Publication date 2006 Conference series Financial Services Institute of Australasia Conference Start page 1 End page 28 Publisher Melbourne Centre for Financial Studies Place of publication Melbourne, Vic. Summary The National Australia Bank’s (NAB) experience of corporate governance has been contrary to current standards of good corporate governance, accountability and risk management. Over the last few years NAB’s misadventures have brought it under intensive media scrutiny with the HomeSide losses and the investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the USA for breaches of auditor independence. More recently the unauthorised trading by its foreign exchange dealers violated NABs risk management practices and the subsequent board crisis resulted in significant downgrading of the share price on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX). This paper briefly reviews the international history of corporate accountability and its growth in Australia. The increasing shareholder and legislative pressure to improve sustainability, accountability and board functionality have driven these issues to the forefront of Governing Boards’ agendas worldwide. The board remains ultimately responsible for all actions of the company and this is highlighted by APRA’s recent release of the new governance standard APG510 for implementation by October 2006. The impact of NAB’s board dysfunction on its overall performance is compared with the other major banks in Australia. Cost efficiency ratios, share price and total shareholder return are used as measures of performance and profitability. It is clear, from NAB’s recent experience, as the worst performer of all the majors, with a 19.7% fall in net profit and a cost to income ratio of 57.4% in 2004, that the NAB board needs to improve its performance and accountability to meet a sustainable increase in profitability and higher return for investors. Notes Held at the Finsia-Melbourne Centre for Financial Studies, Banking and Finance Language eng Field of Research 150203 Financial Institutions (incl Banking) HERDC Research category E1 Full written paper - refereed Copyright notice ©2006, Melbourne Centre for Financial Studies Persistent URL http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30006187 Document type: Conference Paper Collections: Faculty of Business and Law School of Accounting, Economics and Finance Related Links Link Description Connect to published version (restricted access) Go to link with your DU access privileges     Unless expressly stated otherwise, the copyright for items in DRO is owned by the author, with all rights reserved. Versions Version Filter Type Tue, 03 Mar 2009, 09:17:09 EST Tue, 08 Jun 2010, 13:50:10 EST Thu, 26 Aug 2010, 10:39:19 EST Thu, 26 Aug 2010, 10:40:58 EST Fri, 16 Mar 2012, 16:08:35 EST Wed, 27 Aug 2014, 21:32:23 EST Filtered Full Citation counts:   Cited 0 times in TR Web of Science Cited 0 times in Scopus Search Google Scholar Access Statistics: 1494 Abstract Views, 3 File Downloads  -  Detailed Statistics Created: Mon, 07 Jul 2008, 09:59:42 EST