ANZ rumoured as potential RBS Asia-Pac buyer

Rumours have been rife in the past two days that Australia & New Zealand Banking Group is once again looking at acquiring assets from Royal Bank of Scotland as the UK lender cuts back its operations in the Asia-Pacific region.

"I'm interested in looking at their assets across the region," Andrew Geczy, head of ANZ's international and institutional banking business, said in an interview in Sydney on Wednesday.

"There's opportunities that happen as many of the European and American banks retrace back home."

Bloomberg News reported that these assets from RBS would help bulk up ANZ's presence in a region where it competes with large global banks such as Citigroup and HSBC.

Adding more credibility to the rumour, too, are ANZ's strategy releases that it will double the percentage of profit it gets from businesses outside Australia and New Zealand to as much as 30 per cent by 2017.

These rumours have been floated from time to time, certainly since August 2009, when ANZ announced it was to acquire the Royal Bank of Scotland's retail, wealth and commercial businesses in Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia and Hong Kong, and the institutional businesses in Taiwan, the Philippines and Vietnam for around US$550 million in cash.

At the time, the bank said this was "a significant step forward in ANZ's goal to be a super regional bank" which would "transform ANZ's wealth and retail banking platform in Asia Pacific."

ANZ was asked to comment on Bloomberg's speculation but had not done so before Banking Day's news deadlines.