ANZ follows CBA on Storm suits, starts settlement talks with clients
Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ASX: ANZ) has announced on Friday that it has started talks on special resolution scheme with its depositors who were also clients of Storm Financial and saw their savings wiped out when the investment company went under.
ANZ followed the initiative of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) as the two financial institutions increasingly came under extreme criticism for recklessly facilitating loans to Storm Financial customers.
A big number of both ANZ and CBA clients lost their savings when the Queensland-based financial investment company collapsed and entered liquidation in 2008, during the height of the global financial crisis.
Slater & Gordon, the law firm assisting in implementing the resolution scheme said that up to 100 ANZ customer would be notified this week about the program, in which they would see interests incurred on relevant loans being omitted in the process of their taking part in the proposed program.
Lawyer Damian Scattini expressed confidence that the resolution should be fair enough for all parties concerned as he stressed that "everyone will have their case looked at individually and everyone will have a lawyer considering their claim and advocating for them."
Mr Scattini said by opting for the resolution scheme course, it is hoped that "we will achieve fair, sound outcomes for our clients in a much sooner time than if we went through the traditional route."
A similar arrangement has also been worked out for affected clients of CBA and Slater & Gordon said that a total of up to 900 customers out of the 1100 claims have opted to jump into settlements covered by the identical scheme.