RBA Sees Profit After Stevens Forced to Pay Swan Dividend
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Australia’s central bank projects it will have A$550 million ($578 million) available for distribution in the 12 months to June 30, a year after it was forced to hand the government almost half its earnings against Governor Glenn Stevens’s wishes, documents show.
Stevens urged Treasurer Wayne Swan to forgo a dividend from the Reserve Bank of Australia for the year to June 2012 to allow the governor to rebuild a buffer drained by the high currency. “This would be consistent with your earlier agreement to this approach to begin the process of restoring the balance of this Reserve,” Stevens wrote in a July 13, 2012, letter to Swan released today under a Freedom of Information Act request by Bloomberg News.