ANZ’s incoming chief executive officer, Shayne Elliott, will take over the bank in January next year. He will be succeeding Mike Smith, who has run the bank for the past eight years. Elliott’s first task will be to improve on ANZ’s underachieving Asian business, which utilised nearly a third of the bank’s capital in the first three quarters of 2015 while accounting for only less than one-fifth of profits.
Elliott is expected to trim the Asian business rather than exit the market altogether. ANZ said that it would cut about $6.5 billion of low-yielding trade finance exposures in Asia by not extending some loans that have matured and that it will reduce its corporate loan book in the region.
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Elliott may also sell some of the company’s shareholdings in Asian banks such as PT Bank Pan Indonesia, Malaysia’s AMMB Holdings Bhd, Shanghai Rural Commercial Bank and Bank of Tianjin.
"We’ve taken some hard decisions around the trade business in particular, which is a really competitive business in Asia," Elliott said. "From time to time, it’s a great business – and when we have excess liquidity, we can participate."
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