A loan? Sure!
'It's your money Ralph!' was a very effective campaign slogan
used by the State Bank of Victoria. Unfortunately the public was to
discover that the slogan went a lot deeper than they might have thought.
The difficult state of finances in Victoria caused the Treasurer,
Rob Jolly, to finally resign on March 29th, 1990, as he was dumped by
his party after the State Bank of Victoria announced massive losses. The bank lost on the order of 3 billion dollars, more than 3 times the bank's capital at the time, due
to its finance arm, Tricontinental. After several proposals for bailing out the bank, the
State Bank of Victoria was acquired by The Commonwealth Bank of Australia in 1991.
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