Over the next week or so (with a break for a vacation over the weekend and on Monday and Tuesday) I will be comparing the disclosures in the Basel II disclosures of the “Big 4″ Australian banks. I will be covering the disclosures item by item, with the first (to follow later today) being operational risk.

I would have liked to have done some more on the second tier banks, but that tier is now almost gone and one of them, BankWest, will probably never make a Basel II disclosure. It is now (almost – something could go wrong) certain that St. George will disappear into Westpac. BankWest is still on Basel I1 and, by the time they need to publish their first Basel II disclosures (for the year ended December 2008) they may be a part of the CBA. That leaves Suncorp Metway and, depending on where you put the cut-off, the Bendigo. Not much of a tier, really.

If you have any areas you would like me to focus on more quickly, just ask in comments.

1. If you have not found any BankWest Basel II disclosures, that is why. The reason for this are covered here.