ANZ yesterday announced the establishment of a separate foreign bank branch in New Zealand that will operate alongside its subsidiary ANZ National. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand licensed the branch with effect from yesterday.Commonwealth Bank and Westpac both operate branches as well as locally incorporated (and supervised) entities for their primary retail and business banking operations in New Zealand.ANZ's rationale is that the branch structure, which writes assets and liabilities off the Australian banking business, will simplify internal funding arrangements and also provide options for the bank in which NZ entity to use to write new business (and presumably corporate and institutional in most cases).