THE BANK OF NEW ZEALAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 237, 6 October 1932, Page 23

THE BANK OF NEW ZEALAND.

As one of the numerous small shareholders in this bank, would you please let mo- know what your financial editor means by his statement that "only a super-optimist would believe the bank would maintain its present dividend " In my opinion tlio "Star" has done everything it could to induce the bank to lower its dividend rate. The bank is owned by tlw shareholders, who have paid dearly for anything the Government did for it in the past. Any fall in the dividend rate would fall extremely hard on a lot of people who have invested their life's savings in the bank's sharcs - SHAREHOLDER.

[Our financial editor explains that all the other banke trading in Australia and New Zealand have found it necessary to reduce their rate of dividend as a result of lessened profits, arid he thinks it unlikely that the directors of the Bank of New Zealand will be able to avoid a similar course. Supporting this view, he mentions that the bank's net profits which were £948,534.in 1029-30, dropped to £845,813 in 1930-31, and to £587,033 for 1931-32. In making the laet dividend payment of 14 1-3 per cent the bank paid out £230,000 more than had been earned that year. Obviously such a process cannot be continued indefinitely. It needs only to be added that it is in the interests of all shareholders in the bank equally with the whole of the trading community, that the bank should be maintained in a position of unimpeachable strength.—Ed.]