Hana beats ANZ to KEB

Hana Financial Group may be about to beat ANZ to a controlling stake in Korea Exchange Bank, and is close to agreeing to paying US$4.1 billion, from US private equity firm Lone Star. Local and international media reported on the progress of negotiations yesterday.

The late run by one of Korea's 10 dominant banking groups for a larger rival damaged by the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s and propped up by US private equity will prove disappointing to ANZ but is hardly unexpected.

The bigger disappointment for ANZ is that its three efforts over the last decade to buy into banking in Asia in a serious way have ended up with no result.

ANZ endeavoured to buy the Thai Military Bank in 2003, with restless domestic investors principally to blame for it eventually passing up on that opportunity. ANZ's eyes then turned instead to the National Bank of New Zealand.

In 2008, under a new CEO and with a crisp new Asian banking strategy to execute, ANZ then bid, but missed out on, Wing Lung bank in Hong Kong.

ANZ CEO Mike Smith said at the time that "international strategy has to be done on an opportunistic basis", a sentiment likely to apply today.