ANZ was the only bank to respond yesterday in a detailed way to a provocative analysis of the industry's reported capital adequacy.Showcased in yesterday's Banking Day, the report by Graham Andersen of Morgij Analytics and John Watson of Margate Financial Research Solutions argued Australian banks may have exaggerated their capital buffers and relied on implausible comparisons with the capital strength of offshore banks.Banking Day sought comment yesterday, as it had on Sunday, from the four major banks and the Australian Bankers Association.Little of substance was forthcoming from three banks and the ABA, with only ANZ preparing a response."This paper is more an exercise in marketing, drawing conclusions through jumps in logic or incomplete information," the bank said in an emailed statement sent by Stephen Ries, ANZ's senior manager for media relations.Ries said that feedback from the ANZ's capital team was that the research  "fundamentally misunderstands the purpose" of a March 2014 report by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision of Australia's conformity to global banking rules.ANZ said the purpose of this report was "to identify where the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has not fully implemented the Basel III capital reforms, rather than identify where APRA is more conservative than Basel." "The paper incorrectly stated [the March 2014 BCBC review] found no material adjustments to restate Australian major's ratios downwards," ANZ said.The bank also charged the authors with "ignoring annex 10 which lists most of the areas where APRA's rules are stricter than the Basel minimum. These were not quantified, as it was not the purpose of the report, although APRA noted in its response that they were in excess of 100 basis points." ANZ pointed out that "in its recent submission to the Financial System Inquiry, APRA acknowledged that the average understatement to Basel of Australian capital ratios was circa 190 bps."ANZ highlighted that its estimate of its core capital ratio was 220 lower under Australian methodology.The bank said this "variation of 30 bps [is] explained by ANZ not deducting its own shares as the position is still not clear," and a higher impact from measurement of interest rate risk in the banking book than the industry average.