ANZ's perennial non-delivery
Cast your eye around the ANZ board room table and it becomes apparent how Shayne Elliott got away with as much as he did. Seven directors, and virtually no banking expertise.
Westpac is lucky to have ANZ to point to, or else it would so clearly be the worst of the Big Four. Indeed, they are both lucky to have the other: in a dead heat for Australian banking descendancy.
Like Westpac, ANZ was plain lucky to escape evisceration by Kenneth Hayne's royal commission into the financial services sector six years ago, yet the board (then chaired by David Gonski) and CEO Shayne Elliott clung to this oversight as some sort of moral exculpation, which it certainly wasn't.
In mid-2024, explosive allegations that ANZ's fixed income desk had ripped off the Australian government in pricing major bond trades (while unacceptable behaviour and illicit substances were conspicuous on the bank's trading floor) led the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority to slap an additional $250 million capital penalty on ANZ, taking its add-on to $750 million. "Of the major banks that had capital add-ons applied in 2019," APRA chair John Lonsdale said, "ANZ is the only bank yet to have its add-on either removed or reduced."