Briefs: Bank of Communications issues FRNs, financial services to decline, banks shuffle execs, and
China's Bank of Communications, which received a foreign bank branch licence from APRA in 2011, has entered the Australian debt capital market with its first issue of Australian dollar senior unsecured floating rate notes. ANZ, Commonwealth Bank and HSBC are joint lead managers to the transaction. The three-year notes have indicative pricing of 138 basis points over the bank bill swap rate. BoCom is one of China's top five banks; its Sydney branch is licensed to provide financial services to wholesale clients only. Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson expects financial services to decline in relative terms, as "low productivity growth sectors, such as aged care and health sectors, expand," he told the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies yesterday. In one of his first moves as Sunsuper chief executive, Scott Hartley, former general manager of National Australia Bank's corporate and institutional wealth team, has unveiled two new divisions to be headed up by executives who worked with him at NAB, reports the Financial Standard. The 'Advice & Growth' division will be led by former MLC Business Super general manager Michael Mulholland. Another division, 'Products, Projects & Technical Services', will be headed by Jason Sommer, who was formerly general manager, change and technical services at NAB Wealth. Cash flow specialist provider, Scottish Pacific Debtor Finance, has appointed debtor finance executive Bob Ada as business development manager in Queensland and the Northern Territory. His mission will be to attract small to medium growing businesses to take up his firm's specialist working capital facilities. Ada previous role was head of cash flow finance at Bank of Queensland's debtor finance business. He had similar positions at St George Bank and Advance Bank in the 1990s. A Roy Morgan Research report on members' satisfaction with the financial performance of superannuation funds, covering the six months to May 2014, shows an overall rise of 7.2 percentage points over the comparable period a year ago. Self-managed super funds (75.6 per cent) remain the clear leader, followed by industry funds (55.8 per cent) and retail funds (53.7 per cent). Among retail funds, Colonial First State (57.3 per cent) led the major brands with the biggest improver being MLC, (up 12.3 percentage points). "The … retail sector will increasingly rely on their adviser network and advice to retain customers," said Norman Morris, industry communications director at Roy Morgan Research. National Australia Bank has promoted three women to senior technology roles, reports IT Wire. The three women - Dayle Stevens, Lisa Palma and Nicole Devine have been promoted to general manager positions within the bank's technology and NextGen teams. Stevens has been promoted to general manager, support services technology, Palma to general manager, technology workplace service management, and Devine takes up the position of general manager, program office and commercial management.