The Reserve Bank’s former head of payments policy, Tony Richards, has been appointed chair of the CBDC Steering Committee at the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre. The RBA announced last month that it will work with the Digital Finance CRC, a program funded by industry, universities and government, to explore use cases for a central bank digital currency in Australia. Richards retired from the RBA at the end of last year. Judo Bank has priced its inaugural public senior unsecured benchmark bond issue. The bank raised A$175 million via a three-year note priced at 265 basis points over the three-year swap rate. Judo has a BBB- (positive outlook) credit rating from S&P Global Ratings. The bank’s Treasurer Michael Heath said in a statement: “While term deposits remain our core source of funding, we are progressively building out our presence and capability in debt capital markets.” Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark is among those angry at the sale by NAB-subsidiary BNZ of artworks originally purchased when the bank was state-owned. The auction house handling the sale of artworks by some of New Zealand’s most renowned artists described BNZ’s art collection as “the greatest corporate collection New Zealand has ever seen”, and total sales at the first part of the auction have exceeded NZ$13.5m, The Herald reported. The Auckland Art Gallery has also claimed the bank dismissed its concerns over the sale.