Banks should decide on dividend increases and share buybacks after receiving the results of stress tests, when they know how much capital regulators wish them to hold.

You will not see, in my career, the kind of returns this industry had in 2005 and 2006 for a very simple reason - the banks were undercapitalized, and returns are a function of earnings and capital.

The threshold question: Will banks continue to exist? The answer is yes, because society will still need the two essential functions they provide: mobilization of capital from providers to users, and facilitation of payments for goods and services.

I have a direct way of speaking. What I do is tend to lay out everything; I tend to tell people what I'm going to do and how I'm going to do it and what is success for us and what's not... without being too parochial about it, I think Aussies are more direct.

Because I've been on the receiving end of infidelity, I know how much it hurts.

I can appreciate that because some are barely getting by, just receiving cost of living increases,