Briefs: Westpac shake-up rumoured, Heartland upgrades outlook, ABS numbers show price rises, and mor

Banking Day staff
  • "Sources close to" Brian Hartzer, who takes over from Gail Kelly as Westpac's CEO on Monday, have told the AFR he will try to stamp his authority on the executive team by having St George boss George Frazis, retail head Jason Yetton, chief information officer David Curran and BT Financial boss Brad Cooper report to him. Previously they reported to the CEO of Australian Financial Services, a position created for Hartzer when he started at Westpac in June 2012 after leaving a senior position at Royal Bank of Scotland. There is also speculation long-serving institutional banking boss Rob Whitfield has been approached about running London's Standard Chartered.

  • Regional rural and business lender Heartland New Zealand has upgraded its outlook for full year profit after strong lending growth in the first half. It forecast its net profit for the year to June to be NZ$46 million to NZ$48 million, up from its previous guidance of NZ$42 million to NZ$45 million. "Underlying asset growth is expected to continue for the second half of the financial year, with strong Business, Rural and Consumer volumes projected while also maintaining expected margins," Heartland said.

  • The price level for insurance and financial services lifted by two per cent over the year to December 2014, reversing four quarters of benign inflation in the sector. "Other" financial services and insurance were the principal drivers of rising prices in finance, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said yesterday. However, in a separate briefing on the Australian insurance sector's outlook for 2015, by JP Morgan and Taylor Fry, any further prospects of strong general insurance premium growth were talked down.

  • The 2014 calendar year was a big one for private equity divestments, especially those that took the IPO exit route. And better still, those PE-backed share floats have performed very well overall. In the next few days, the venture capitalist lobby group, AVCAL and Rothschild will release a report, on post-IPO performances, said Yasser El-Ansary, CEO. Meanwhile, some fund managers have been working to rebuild their portfolios with new assets, leaving many great investment opportunities open for early stage funding of innovative high growth potential businesses.

  • Loan broker and financial advisory firm Mortgage Choice passed what is called "a financial milestone" in December 2014, when it settled A$1.087 billion in mortgages. "Over the last 12 months, Mortgage Choice has grown its loan writer numbers. At the beginning of 2014, we set ourselves the ambitious target of growing our loan writer numbers by 50," said chief executive officer Michael Russell, who highlighted the ongoing strength of the company. "There is no denying the property market has been relatively hot for the last two years and, according to recent data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there is still a lot of heat in the market."

  • On a different measure, it seems that 2014 really was the strongest year for private equity investments since the global financial crisis, leaving the majority of private equity fund managers looking to invest more this year. Preqin, a supplier of data, analysis and intelligence services to the alternative assets industry, spoke to 260 firms worldwide in November last year and 55 per cent claimed they would be investing a higher amount of capital in 2015 compared to last year. A further 35 per cent of managers suggested they would be investing a similar amount as last year.