WBC - Westpac

[Snoopy]

According to the comment at the end of this article, my total $100m paedophile fine settlement could be some way out:

https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle...undering-rules

"23 million breach occasions @ A$17 - A$21 million penalty per breach occasion is A$391 trillion - A$ 483 trillion."

To put that into perspective, total shareholder funds on hand at EOFY2019 was $65 billion. So potentially WBC could be fined over:

391/0.65 = 600

times the amount of shareholder funds on the balance sheet! That sounds like crazy stuff that would immediately collapse the bank. Hyperbolic surely?

My best guess so far is that Westpac will be facing a fine of between $A20m and $A483,000m

Can I narrow that down a bit further?

https://qz.com/1754928/australias-we...ng-pedophilia/

"Austrac’s current record fine was issued against Commonwealth Bank for A$700 million. But its number of violations was less than 2% of Westpac’s 23 million total."

So let's extrapolate Westpac's potential fine based on their errant transaction level.

$700m / 0.02 = $35,000m. Hmmmm

"Overall, Austrac found 12 customers who together had sent more than 3,000 payments worth around $340,000 to child abusers in the Philippines and elsewhere in Southeast Asia."

That is a rate of 250 incidents per rogue customer.

Of the 23m breaches noted at Westpac, then that would imply 92,000 rogue customers.

Using an A$17-A$21 million penalty per rogue customer (a punishment rate I just made up), I get an overall fine of $1,564b to $1,932b. That several orders of magnitude larger than the $0.700b CBA fine. But the banking environment has changed in the Covid-19 environment. A fine of materially more than $700m at this time could cause WBC and, as a consequence, the rest of the banking system in Australia to become unstable. Would a court risk that? Or would the legal system carry on down their path regardless of the economic consequences of any fine imposed?

SNOOPY