National Australia Bank began handing out notice of dismissal to select key staff yesterday, The Australian reports. "A handful of the executive general managers … have lost their jobs through compulsory or voluntary redundancies, with other roles redefined," the newspaper says. This is one step in a "simplification program" that will lead to a net reduction of 4000 jobs by the end of the 2020 financial year. Henry van der Heyden will be the new chair of Rabobank Australia. He replaces Bill Gurry, who is retiring from the board after ten years. van der Heyden is chair of Rabobank New Zealand and has been a member of the Rabobank Australia board since 2012. He served as chair of dairy giant Fonterra from 2002 until 2012. New Zealand's Financial Markets Authority has published its first set of statistics on the crowd funding industry, including both equity funding and debt funding platforms. It reported the platforms had lent NZ$259.9 million to individuals and $29.5 million to businesses. More than one in ten of the loans were either in arrears or had been written off.