The viral contagion known as the GFC originated in the banking sector of the US. Other banks throughout Europe were also complicit in the game of "pass the parcel" that masqueraded as a financial system.

Australia is rather different. We have four major banks which dominate the Australian financial landscape. The government's "four pillars" policy means that they are forbidden to merge with each other, much to the chagrin of merchant bankers who would love to earn tens of millions in "success" fees for such a merger, and whichever CEO could get his or her (yes, one of them, this one, is run by a woman) ego stoked by assuming the helm of a ridiculously oversized and "too big to fail" bank.

However the fact that the four main banks do have such dominance of the market means that they don't have to play the kinds of stupid games that many of the American banks did to earn themselves a tidy little profit. As a result Australia is one of the relatively few countries where the banking sector emerged from the GFC more or less in tact, although the same can't be said for some of the second tier lenders (mostly housing mortgage lenders) who relied on short term overseas funding. (The "big four" rely on that to some extent as well but also have a captive base of domestic deposits.)

This bank, Westpac (disclosure; I am a shareholder) started out life as the Bank of New South Wales in 1817. It declares itself to be "Australia's First Bank" which, for all intents and purposes and ignoring a few historical footnotes, is true enough. In 1982 it took over the Commercial Bank of Australia and rebranded itself as Westpac. By 1990 it almost hit the wall (which is another reason that our banking sector survived in tact; it was more risk averse than its American cousins, some of them having had a near death experience in living memory), rebuilt itself through the 1990's, and since the early 2000's has been one of the top two of the four banks pretty much year in and year out.

Oh, the relevance of the PAD to today? As Adele Ferguson wrote:

"Westpac recorded total cash earnings of $3.17 billion for the six months to March 31, up from $2.93 billion in the previous six months. Its key profitability indicator, net interest margin, rose 1 basis point, compared with a 3 basis point fall reported yesterday by ANZ in its earnings."

There's a lot of noise about this being a peak in earnings, but how much of that is understandable caution and how much of it is the banks themselves trying to talk down the results to avoid the glare of government regulators... well, that's what you base share purchase decisions on.

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