ACFS welcomes appointment of Research Director to the Australian Competition Tribunal

Posted on August 24, 2011
Filed Under ACFS Governance, General News | Leave a Comment

The Board and Director of the Australian Centre for Financial Studies are delighted with the announcement of the appointment of ACFS Research Director Professor Kevin Davis as a new part-time member of the Australian Competition Tribunal for a term of five years.

The Australian Competition Tribunal is an independent statutory tribunal that hears applications for authorisation of company mergers and acquisitions which would otherwise be prohibited under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (CCA).  The Tribunal also considers appeals on certain Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) decisions, including decisions to grant or refuse merger clearances, reviews of decisions under Part IIIA of the CCA (national access regime), and other authorisation decisions made by the ACCC. Hon Justice John Mansfield AM of the Federal Court will be the new part-time President of the Australian Competition Tribunal. The Australian Competition Tribunal now consists of a part-time President, three Deputy Presidents and nine part-time members.

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Contact details:
Professor Kevin Davis
Research Director, Australian Centre for Financial Studies and
Professor of Finance, University of Melbourne
W: +61 3 9666 1050
info@australiancentre.com.au

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The Australian Financial System in the 2000s

Posted on August 19, 2011
Filed Under Banking, Financial Institutions and Markets, Funds Management & Superannuation, Insurance, Publications, Research Review | Leave a Comment

Paper prepared for the Reserve Bank of Australia Annual Conference, August 2011

RBA’s Economic Group holds an annual Conference, and the theme for 2011 was “The Australian Economy in the 2000s“. At the start of each decade, the RBA conference reflects on the ten years past to highlight and discuss various aspects of the Australian Economy. In the paper, Prof Kevin Davis reviews the Australian financial system in the 2000s, and draws some comparisons with predecessor “The Australian Financial System in the 1990s” written by Marianne Gizycki and Philip Lowe, Reserve Bank of Australia ten years ago.

Abstract
The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) occupied only a quarter of the decade of the 2000s but, because of its severity and implications for future financial sector development, dominates the decade. The Australian financial system coped relatively well with the GFC, raising the question of whether there was something special about its structure and prior evolution which explains that experience. This paper reviews Australian financial sector performance and development over the decade, before providing a more detailed overview of the Australian GFC experience and its implications and considering explanations for the Australian financial sector resilience.

Introduction
The Australian (and global) financial system entered the first decade of the millennium preparing for a systems crisis, in the form of the Y2K computer scare, which on January 1, 2000 passed without event. But towards the end of the decade, the financial sector was faced with, arguably, its most serious systemic crisis ever which the Australian financial system and economy weathered relatively well compared to advanced nations of northern hemisphere. While that Global Financial Crisis (GFC) occupied only one-quarter of the decade (from mid 2007), it prompts the questions which this review of the decade must seek to answer. Was there something about the structure and evolution of the Australian financial system which explained its resilience in the face of the crisis? Was that resilience due to lower risk taking by the banking sector in the lead up to the crisis; did the distribution of risk within the financial system facilitate adjustment to the shocks encountered; and what role can be attributed to regulatory responses following the onset of the crisis?

In order to place the developments of the 2000s in context, this paper is structured as follows. First, overall macro-economic and flow of funds trends are reviewed. Second, the overall picture of financial sector growth and structure in the 2000s is briefly reviewed in section 2. Then, because of the important role of regulation in financial sector evolution section 3 examines the major regulatory developments and influences on the financial sector prior to the GFC. Section 4 then examines important developments in the financial sector in more detail. Section 5 outlines how the GFC affected the Australian financial markets and regulatory responses to that. Section 6 discusses the fall-out from the GFC in terms of financial regulation and section 7 draws on the prior discussion to address the questions posed above regarding Australian financial sector resilience. Section 8 focuses upon end of decade issues and section 9 concludes.

The paper is written by Professor Kevin Davis, Research Director of the Australian Centre for Financial Studies. Kevin is also a Professor of Finance at the University of Melbourne

Read full paper

Other RBA 2011 Conference Papers

Contact details:

Professor Kevin Davis
Research Director, Australian Centre for Financial Studies and
Professor of Finance, University of Melbourne
T: +61 3 9666 1050
info@australiancentre.com.au

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