CEO on a mission: ANZ's Shayne Elliott
In the disgraceful Australian catalogue of bank takeovers, one overlooked old ANZ favourite bears a review.
Who even remembers ANZ’s lousy 1998 takeover of building society Town & Country?
ANZ absorbed 27 Town and Country branches in the Perth area, initially maintaining the livery and identity, but it took barely six months before that year’s cost-cutting pulse claimed this legacy.
ANZ worked out it could no longer afford the luxury of operating Perth-based Town & Country Bank as a separate operation in Western Australia, the AFR reported at the time.
So it rebranded them ANZ-Town & Country.
Then ANZ set about eliminating them – before pretty much forgetting it bought Town & Country in the first place, let alone doing anything with it.
This is the certain fate of Suncorp Bank.
This merger and this merger authorisation: both are absolute stinkers.
Not for a moment can anyone entertain the notion that this takeover will prove material to the ANZ value story, let alone create all that much value within ANZ.
ANZ have never cut it, and the Melbourne bank will flounder in Brisbane.
Tearing away the Suncorp tech stack and core and rapidly transitioning customer lists and products and records onto ANZ systems. Some version of this is the way to do it.
Colonial State Bank – remember that? – was saved via a much-needed Commonwealth Bank rescue in 1994.
David Murray and the CBA crew did not mess around and did not wait around.
Three or four months! That’s supposed to be the time it took CBA to jettison old State Bank kit and nonsensical Colonial add-ons.
Even if it was longer, it will always be the benchmark for an Australian bank integration and ANZ will not come within cooee.
ANZ will not even try and Toorak to a brick, it will wander off track from early on with this merger. And Suncorp Bank will never recover.