Accounting software company Xero has hired Commonwealth Bank's former chief marketing and online officer, Andy Lark, to be its new chief marketing officer. Lark has a high profile in the marketing industry, thanks to some energetic blogging, and helped deliver a number of technology, customer service and payments innovations at CBA. Xero has ambitions to move into the payments market and has been linked to the mobile point of sale terminal provider Square. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has started publishing more detailed aggregated quarterly statistics on bank incomes, expenses, profits and margins. The figures on New Zealand's 23 registered banks show combined net profit in the June quarter was NZ$1.139 billion, up 12 per cent from a year ago. Combined net interest margin rose to 227 basis points from 217 bps a year ago, helping boost net interest income 9.7 per cent to NZ$2.21 billion. A 0.9 per cent fall in operating costs helped further boost net profit. Joe Barker, Macquarie Group's long-serving chief information officer is set to leave the company in December, according to iTnews.com.au. The IT trade publication speculated that this was part of a broader restructure that has seen culling of senior management ranks in recent weeks. Barker was reportedly under pressure to deliver lower cost technology "across six loosely connected organisations", while maintaining "some semblance of 'Chinese walls' from each other at systems level" - an arrangement that makes the job one of the toughest tech leadership roles in banking. Earlier this week Australia Pacific Airports Corporation, operator of the Melbourne and Launceston Airports, raised €350 million (A$500m) in its European bond market debut. BNP Paribas was lead arranger and one of the lead book runners for ten-year secured bonds, which will pay a 1.75 per cent coupon. James Hayes, head of fixed income at BNP Paribas Australia and NZ, claimed the book was almost three times over-subscribed within an hour of opening. Final pricing carried a new issuer premium of just five basis points. The rate of prime housing loans for RMBS that were in arrears fell in August but the rate rose slightly for subprime RMBS, as measured by Standard & Poor's Performance Index. Loans in arrears greater than 30 days underlying Australian prime RMBS decreased by 4 basis points in August to 1.09 per cent. At the same time, the total prime RMBS outstanding fell to approximately A$118.2 billion. Subprime RMBS arrears increased 13 bps to 4.59 per cent in August. There is A$2.8 billion in subprime RMBS outstanding as of 31 August 2014.