Bank of Queensland has completed a A$150 million issue of tier two subordinated notes, paying a margin of 340 basis points over the bank bill swap rate. The notes mature in May 2016. The bank has also redeemed $200 million of outstanding tier two subordinated instruments. As a result, its tier two capital ratio will fall by 0.18 per cent. The Clean Energy Finance Corp has warned that the Australian government's targeted rate of return on its investments in emerging clean energy technologies may be too high, despite a small cut in the targeted benchmarks. Under a new investment mandate released on Tuesday - the third in less than 15 months - the CEFC said it welcomed the decision to cut the targeted returns to three to four per cent above the government bond rate. It had previously been four to five per cent. Almost half of Australia's lenders continue to delay their response to the RBA's 0.25 per cent cut to the official cash rate, According to comparison website finder.com, a week after the RBA's rate cut announcement only 26 lenders of the 74 lenders on its database have passed on the cut in full, while 12 lenders have kept some of the cut for themselves. In contrast, Australia's largest non-bank mortgage lender, Firstmac, will pass the full cut to its customers. The cut, effective 23 May, will apply to all variable rate loans including owner occupier and investment loans. ANZ Banking Group says its recent deal with Apple to provide Apple Pay in Australia has sparked a surge in applications for credit cards and deposit accounts, which has forced the other major banks to re-enter negotiations with the technology giant, reports the AFR, while noting the main sticking point continues to be how to divide up the billions of dollars of fee income banks earn from processing payments. Recent analysis of the potential impact of blockchain on global securities markets confirms what many have been privately thinking for some time - the technology has been over-hyped, asserts Chanticleer in his AFR column, after reading papers published in the past month by the European Central Bank, the Swift Institute and Accenture (in partnership with Swift). They all make the point that while Blockchain is a remarkable invention, it was not designed with the financial industry in mind.