The silver lining, he added, is we’re not looking at the same broader banking industry issues that brought about the GFC, and that US and Swiss authorities acted quickly to stem contagion where possible.

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He joins other economists and market watchers in hoping the Reserve Bank of Australia slows things down from here.

“After the biggest and fastest rise in interest rates since the late 1980s, increasing evidence that growth is slowing and inflation has peaked, and increasing threats to global growth from the global banking turmoil, it makes sense for the RBA to have a pause in April to better assess the outlook and the lagged impact of hikes to date,” he said.

In corporate news, Medibank’s share price sunk 0.9 per cent after Australia’s largest private health insurer announced its technology and operations chief, John Goodall, would retire and depart within weeks.

It will be the first departure of a senior executive since a damaging cyberattack last October in which the data of 10 million current and former customers, including private medical details, were stolen and posted to the web.

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“I want to take this opportunity to thank John for his significant contribution to our business over the past six years, and we all wish him well in his retirement,” Medibank CEO David Koczkar said.

Medibank faces significant compensation claims if adverse findings emerge from an investigation by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and an independent report from Deloitte.

The gloomy start follows a wobbly trading day on Wall Street overnight, where stocks closed mostly higher. The S&P 500 rose 0.3 per cent after veering all the way from a 1.8 per cent gain earlier in the day to a 0.4 per cent loss. The Dow Jones posted a slight gain of 0.2 per cent, while strength for tech and high-growth stocks helped the Nasdaq composite do better than the rest of the market.

Tweet of the day:

Quote of the day:

“Whispers occur via the internet rather than someone telling their neighbour. We’ve moved into a world where it’s easier for contagion to occur.”

That’s University of Melbourne finance professor Kevin Davis, who says technology has made it easier for banking panic to spread. These days you can move money out of a bank in a few minutes through an app rather than lining up to withdraw cash, and fears can catch on rapidly through social media.

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Personal data of Rio Tinto’s former and current Australian employees may have been stolen by a cybercriminal group, encompassing payroll information such as payslips and overpayment letters of a small number of employees.

This didn’t bear too badly on Rio’s share price though, with the mining giant finishing 0.2 per cent higher.

With AP

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