Briefs: ANZ selling trading platform, Emerchants enters Italian market, Dominic Stevens is ASX CEO,
The sale of ANZ's online broking unit, formerly known as E*TRADE Australia, is underway, as AFR's Street Talk reports: "Interested parties are perusing documents and indicative bids are due at the end of August. ANZ last week dispatched an information memorandum to international and domestic specialist online broking providers." The sale is said to include ANZ Share Investing's trading platform and customer holdings on the ASX's Clearing House Electronic Sub-register System (CHESS). It is the first asset to be cut loose in ANZ's broader wealth and life insurance review. Prepaid card company Emerchants has made its entry into the Italian market, signing a five-year contract with fuel supplier TBS Europe SRL. TBS Europe currently sells paper fuel vouchers to companies for distribution to their employees for business travel and rewards. Emerchants will replace the vouchers with prepaid cards. Emerchants acquired a UK prepaid card company, Store Financial Services, in 2014 and has been on the lookout for expansion opportunities in the UK and Europe since. The ASX Limited Board has appointed Dominic Stevens as its managing director and CEO, effective from 1 August. Stevens will be expected to steer clear of outside interests with the slightest whiff of reputational risk - a problem he's well qualified to recognise as he joined ASX as an independent non-executive director in December 2013 and has served on its audit and risk committee, and on a number of ASX clearing and settlement boards. Stevens was CEO of Challenger from 2008 to 2012, before which he was the company's Deputy CEO and head of capital, risk and strategy. Prior to Challenger he held senior positions during a long career at Bankers Trust Australia. Teachers Mutual Bank and its subsidiary UniBank have resumed lending to property investors. In May Teachers announced that it had failed to get its investor mortgage sales under the ten per cent annual growth limit set by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and would stop selling mortgages to investors. Yesterday the mutual bank said it had slowed the growth in its investor book and was in a position to return to the market. Austraclear, the primary settlement system for Australia's wholesale debt securities market, has signalled it is technically ready, as of 1 August 2016, to support the issuance, settlement and holding of renminbi denominated securities. "This follows Austraclear's creation of a real-time RMB settlement service which was completed in July 2014 and further facilitates the internationalisation of RMB in Australia," said law firm King and Wood Mallesons in a note to clients. KWM suggested that market participants "take certain steps", including the establishment of an RMB account, to ensure they were ready for multi-currency issuances in Australia. Simon Gray is the new chairman of the Markets Disciplinary Panel, to serve a two-year term from 1 August 2016, ASIC announced. Gray is deputy CEO of Shaw and Partners and was the deputy chairman of the MDP, an independent peer-review forum that on disciplinary action for alleged breaches of