Briefs: AFG chairman's shareholding cut by Family Court, Aussie's Porges wrangling data wranglers, N
The chairman of listed loan broker AFG has seen his shareholding halved under orders from the Family Court. "AFG advises that in accordance with orders of the Family Court of Australia at Sydney, Mr Anthony Gill, chairman and non-executive director of the company, has transferred 1,125,000 shares in the Company off-market, as part of the full and final settlement of his divorce proceedings," read the covering note to the ASX from company secretary Lisa Bevan. The attached change of director's interest notice - the first change notification from Gill since May 2015 - showed that his previous shareholding comprised 300,000 ordinary shares and an indirect holding of 1,950,000 ordinary shares through Gillfamily Pty Ltd as trustee for the Gillfamily Super Fund. After the sale, these holdings were both halved. Westpac Banking Corporation yesterday priced a new medium term floating rate subordinated note transaction. Westpac Institutional Bank was the sole lead manager for the deal, which raised A$725 million in 10-year non-call five-year Tier 2 capital. The deal priced at 180 basis points over three-month bank bill swap rate per cent. As foreshadowed earlier this week, the subordinated notes are expected to be rated four or five notches lower at Baa1(hyb) and BBB, compared to WBC's standalone credit ratings of Aa3 (stable) by Moody's and AA- (negative) by Moody's. Settlement date is 22 June 2018. The Australian Alliance for Data Leadership (AADL) has appointed former finance and banking leader Stephen Porges as its new chief executive. Porges has spent most of the past 20 years in a succession of leadership roles, most recently as chairman at DirectMoney, Australia's only ASX listed marketplace lender. His previous roles include CEO of Aussie Home loans, CEO of Newcastle Permanent Building Society and CEO at SAI Global. Porges joins an organisation needing to bring together a disparate group of data collection, governance and analysis organisations. AADL comprises the Association for Data-driven Marketing and Advertising (ADMA), the Institute of Analytics Professionals of Australia (IAPA), Data Governance Australia (DGA) and Digital + Technology Collective (DTC). Michael Wood, chairman of the New Zealand Parliament' finance and expenditure select committee, says he will be summoning banking and insurance bosses to Wellington to front up to MPs, interest.co reports. He said he'd previously floated the idea of hauling in bank bosses but waited until the Reserve Bank and Financial Markets Authority presented to the committee, which they did at the end of May. Speaking to the committee, the FMA's chief executive officer Rob Everett said their preliminary monitoring work into banks hasn't turned up evidence of widespread, systemic issues that warrant a commission of inquiry in New Zealand. The regulators are not due to report back to the committee until October.