Kina takeover gives ANZ room to focus on strength

KINA Bank’s acquisition of ANZ PNG’s retail, commercial and small and medium enterprise (SME) businesses frees ANZ Bank to focus on its core strengths, says ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott.
Elliott told the Australia-PNG Business Council breakfast in Port Moresby on Friday that the sale will allow ANZ to focus on institutional banking.
ANZ, however, is not leaving PNG, he said.
“We are not leaving PNG,” he said.
“We have been here for 108 years. I know things have been tough with the economy in the last few years, (but) we have been through ups and downs and we are committed.
“At our core, we are a trade bank (and) our strategy is about helping people move the money around these region, so we are company, business and organisation that moves things.
“Whether those things are iron ore, palm oils, trucks, computers – if you move things around, we are really good at helping you do that, trade finance, foreign exchange, cash management, or if you are a business that moves money around.
“If you get a map and if you look around, where all the capital flow is happening around the world today, PNG is part of that flow, PNG is an important part of our network.
“It is about focus and we have taken a strategic decision not just in PNG but right across the group, to focus on a few things that we do really well … when we did that review, one of the areas that we were struggling with was retail banking across Asia.” Elliott said ANZ was proud that the business was going to a local bank like Kina.
“We have been a custodian of that business and it is important that we passed that on to Kina Bank.” The transition would happen in late September, said ANZ PNG chief executive Mark Baker.
“I think if you look at the management and structure of Kina Bank you’ll see that their shareholdings has changed dramatically.
“Their board of directors is really experienced … from Westpac, from banks like Suncorp in Australia.
“When you go down to the management team … you have a CEO that is Westpac, you have got operations guys from Westpac, go down another layer and one third of their leadership team is ex-ANZ already, even before we made the announcement.
“We see ourselves as a bank that actually trains Papua New Guineans to go on to bigger and different jobs.
“Many of them have actually gone to Kina already, so I think when we did the due diligence, that formed a large part of it.”