KEB a maybe for ANZ

Ian Rogers
ANZ's CEO Mike Smith provided little insight into the level of the bank's interest in making a bid for the 51 per cent stake in Korea Exchange Bank that Lone Star Fund has for sale.

"I think it's no secret that there's a mandate out there from Lone Star to sell their interest in KEB and it would be remiss of us not to look at it," Smith said yesterday.

"There is absolutely no decision one way or another right now - you have to just evaluate the opportunity," he said.

"Countries like Japan, Korea, India and China are going to be incredibly important, because they're major trading partners of Australia and therefore it figures there is going to be customer flow.

"But those areas are quite difficult in terms of opportunity, they're not emerging markets, they are mature markets and opportunity for assets rarely comes up. You just have to be opportunistic," he said.