The era of credit rationing may be coming to a close, at least for the biggest businesses.Mike Smith, managing director of ANZ, told an investor briefing yesterday in connection with the bank's half-year profit that "there's a lot of institutional [lending] in the pipeline. "It just hasn't happened yet … a lot of people are still waiting. So we will see an increase in the institutional book."The context for making this remark was Smith's need to bat away a question from a sell-side analyst on the prospect of return of capital; something highly unlikely for reasons of international expansion and regulatory reform more than any shift back to revival in credit growth.Smith did not cite either of those reasons but opted to stress the bank's need to prepare for a revival in business credit.In Australia, lending to business declined each month, bar one, since November 2008. On a 12-month basis measures of growth in business credit turned negative in mid 2009. The latest financial aggregates for the Reserve Bank of Australia show business credit declined 7.6 per cent in the year to February 2010. The RBA will publish financial aggregates for March today. ANZ's data shows that risk-weighted assets fell by 12 per cent in Australia and 11 per cent across the group over the last year.