Judo Bank's backflip bonanza
The bank that doesn't do property development is knee-deep in it.
Judo Bank deserves a black belt for saying one thing and doing another. It calls itself a relationship bank, and yet three large borrowers rotted under its nose. It sets a target exposure as $20 million at origination and $25 million for existing clients, and yet over a quarter of its credit exposure is with customer groups above $20 million.
According to its 2022 annual report, Judo also doesn't actively originate standalone property development, having a "limited appetite for this type of lending." True to form, the bank then financed the acquisition of a $124 million plot where Kokoda Property Group proposed to build its $1.5 billion Teneriffe Banks development in Brisbane.
Judo's 2023 and 2024 annual reports swore off "pure construction risk." By 2025, though, that footnote had disappeared.
Asked about the facility, Judo's spokesperson confirmed it holds a mortgage over the property, but said it was "not appropriate" to comment on individual customers.
