Restructuring of Corporate Ownership in Australia through the Global Financial Crisis

Abstract

The global financial crisis through 2007-2009 was a critical period for finance capital in the USA and UK, and to a lesser extent continental Europe. The viability of many banks and other financial corporations was seriously questioned: some disappeared while many others only survived because of state dispensation of large amounts of taxpayerfunded largesse. Australian finance capital, by contrast, escaped the crisis relatively unscathed. Two significant banks were swallowed up by members of the Big Four, and the viability of the banking system was crucially reliant on an open-ended state guarantee, but these were minor developments compared to the traumatic experiences in the US and Europe. With the discrediting and debilitation of much of global finance capital, it might have been expected that this would have taken a step back in terms of its control and ownership of the Australian economy. Because of the relatively strong performance outcomes of the Australian economy it might have been expected that Australian finance capital would have reasserted a new role for itself in ownership and control within the local economy. But has it?