An Asian name and a top notch performer in business and banking heads the ANZ board shortlist as the bank’s badly needed next CEO.
On borrowed time for not just months but years now, Shayne Elliott’s remaining at ANZ for anything more than a nominal period of time is totally untenable.
Somebody else will be looking after the Suncorp Bank takeover, and, as it will be an outsider, they will be wondering why ANZ blundered into buying market share that history, culture and entrenched oligopoly confusion teaches that there is an almost certain guarantee that the market share ANZ is buying will be squandered in no time at all.
This facet of the ANZ takeover of Suncorp Bank is under-appreciated, and central to Banking Day’s analysis of the Suncorp deal.
ANZ’s prospects of making this takeover a value creator are slender at best. Either next to non-existent or non-existent. That’s the reality.
The entirety of the St George client list, in aggregate, has run off the books under Westpac’s ownership of St George and Bank SA.
It’s the very same over at Commonwealth Bank. CBA derived minimal value, and some say none or negative, from its October 2008 GFC rescue of Bankwest.
Suncorp Bank is a piece of over-politicised crock. Queensland nationalism at its worst.
St George Bank wanted to buy Metway Bank, and the Suncorp deposit banking business too for good measure. St George were the natural owner.
Thirty years later, nearly, Suncorp are raising the drawbridge on bancassurance, a fashion, strategy and fad proven a conspicuous failure in Australian finance.
Suncorp, on the other hand, is poised to unleash its coil.
As a pure play general insurer, Suncorp is on the verge of considerable and considered success.
Maybe (hopefully, ideally) Commonwealth Bank will step forward with a keenly-priced offer and there is no more Suncorp as we know it.
Or Suncorp forges ahead, sticks to its knitting and only later on, when it is good and ready, engineers its rebirth as a financial conglomerate.
Suncorp is an ASX top 10 company in the making. Even top five and why not an ASX top two icon - if that’s where they’re setting out to end up.
From this position a company like Suncorp is as well placed as it’s going to be to conquer the world.
Perhaps this is what \Suncorp looks like in 10 or 200 years. The thing about insurance companies is they think longer term, look ahead in a more analytical way and operate in a manner intended to give an insurance company exceptional prospects of being highly regarded, prosperous and around for the longest of long runs.
After Commonwealth Bank, Suncorp is the only financial institution in Australia with any sort of stab of still being around in 20,000 years.
Unlike insurance companies, banks, especially in Australia, are prone to go broke.
At any point in time it is certain that one of the big four banks will be doing dodgy deals, overreaching and walking themselves over the nearest available diabolically steep cliffs.
This is the only dimension of banking where you can be pretty darn sure about the future - all banks are destined for terrible trouble.
Like ANZ right now. Thanks to the trio of bond trading scandals and the disorderly mismanagement of its supposedly market-leading institutional bank, ANZ is in a fix so far unknown to Australian banking.
The next steps for ANZ are the swift removal of Shayne Elliott and his institutional banking head Mark Whelan.
This morning. Things have run right off the rails and ANZ’s board are kidding themselves if they think that they have all that much of a say.
ANZ’s jive back into the game rests on one or both of two things A courageous pick as managing director and the long overdue sale of ANZ to any big bank from China or any other big bank.
Including Commonwealth Bank or NAB. If it’s ever going to be four into three and could well be four into two in one go, now’s the time.
Shayne Elliott will be doing his best to connive to cling on to his job. You cannot so easily pull any Suncorp monkey out of the traditional banking ‘ballsed it up' hat without me is what Elliott will be arguing and he has a point.
The timing and the reasoning is persuasive, however. Elliott must go, pronto.
The bond trading scandals took place on Elliott’s watch and no matter how thoughtful and thorough the Suncorp story is around ANZ, Suncorp is now a burden and a distraction for ANZ.
Bendigo and Adelaide Bank may still willingly buy Suncorp Bank in pretty much its current form. ANZ could offload Suncorp if it wanted.
Wrapping up. There is one, and only one, means by which Shayne Elliott in his final hours can make his mark and leave a legacy.
Ignore the board’s decree and immediately publish - unredacted, untampered with and in full - the Self-Assessment mandated by APRA a few years ago.
Banking Day rolled up the best of the rumours and ANZ scandal here.