Toast to ANZ Bank – ANZROC Christmas Lunch 2013
Mr President, honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen, it is a privilege and pleasure to propose the toast to ANZ for this Christmas of 2013.
I was surprised to be invited to do this as I didn’t think my career was really typical for an ANZ banker. I spent most of my time overseas and had never worked in the branch network in Australia or New Zealand. Perhaps it would be a fair question to ask what is a typical ANZ banker? In my case, I lived and worked in 14 different countries, not counting visits to a good many more. Each one had its attractions and frustrations but I was fortunate to be present in South Asia, Africa and the Pacific when some big changes were taking place.
ANZ came into my life when it bought Grindlays Bank in 1984. That was a momentous year in London – the Big Bang deregulating the UK financial markets was imminent. The market was in turmoil, with banks merging and diversifying into new businesses like share broking. While some at Grindlays may have regretted the loss of our independence, there were clear advantages to being part of a much bigger ANZ group. It was a time of great optimism.
My first visit to Melbourne came in 1985. I had just become Assistant Group Inspector at Grindlays when the takeover was announced. The following year I was invited to work with Don Jeffrey and Jim Borthwick to harmonize the credit review process between the two banks. Melbourne was a very different city in those days – Southbank was still mainly derelict warehouses but deregulation was under way in Australia too. Business was booming and there was a real sense that ANZ was in the vanguard.
We visited major business units in Melbourne and Sydney to gather input on what they wanted from the inspection function. It was a great opportunity to learn about the group and some Australian icons. One branch visit - I think it was to Preston - finished up with lunch at Collingwood Football Club at Victoria Park. At the time I was assured that this was the equivalent of going to Old Trafford to see Manchester United. As an Aston Villa supporter I was never really clear whether this was meant as a compliment or not, but I confess to having followed the Magpies ever since.
I went back to London and spent another year in Credit Inspection, but then returned to the role in the bank I most enjoyed – that of an overseas country head, and in this case to Bangladesh.
While I had spent several years in South Asia this had been in the bad old days when governments resented the presence of foreign banks and were forever threatening to nationalize us. Bangladesh was different. For many people it has never got past Henry Kissinger’s description of it as a “basket case of a country”. It certainly receives little press coverage except when some disaster or other has occurred.
In fact the country was developing rapidly and we had an outstanding team of young local managers. Five of them have since gone on to become CEO’s of local banks and one to be Deputy Governor of the Central Bank. I was to spend four years in Bangladesh and it remains one of the most enjoyable periods of my time in the bank. The country received substantial donor aid but a dynamic private sector was building new industries in garments, seafood and shipbreaking. Some of this could be risky lending – you never really knew how many prawns you had in a pond until they had been successfully harvested, but I would like to think that one day ANZ will return there, as it has to India and more recently to Myanmar.
Of course the optimism I spoke of in 1984 was dented in subsequent years by economic upheavals across the world. The Big Bang was followed by the Crash of 1987. In Australia, banks were to suffer heavy losses in property lending and in 1992 ANZ sold its African network to Standard Bank of South Africa.
I had moved to Zambia in 1990 and at the time this sale came as a big shock and disappointment. After many years of economic stagnation and confrontation with South Africa, Nelson Mandela had been released and the economy in Zambia was being liberalised. For a banker some of these changes were pretty traumatic - when the Central Bank removed exchange controls and interest rates rocketed to 300 percent you suddenly worried less about the capital you had lent than the interest you hoped to collect! I was to spend two years on secondment to Stanbic. Looking back, they were following a super-regional strategy of their own, and it was exciting to play a part in the early stages of that expansion.
In 1999 an invitation came out of the blue from Bob Lyon to join the Pacific projects team based in Melbourne. The main objective was to
establish a presence in the French Pacific territories but a number of other acquisitions and new ventures were being considered.
One place that made a vivid impression was Timor Leste. In 2000 a UN team was in the process of rebuilding the country from the destruction left by the independence struggle. There were no public services, no legal system and the only money was US Dollar notes flown in from Australia. It was against this background that Jacques Fayolle and I went to report on the feasibility of setting up a branch. It was clearly going to be a challenge, but it was also obvious that it was a country that would have close economic ties with Australia. After a tremendous effort by Chris Durman and his team a branch of ANZ was established early the following year. It has since proven to be a difficult market in which to do business, but when many question whether banks contribute anything of value to society, I am glad to have played a part in bringing an ANZ branch to a country that was literally starting from scratch.
In 2001 I moved to Vanuatu for a year. ANZ was buying Bank of Hawaii’s business there and I had the job of managing the integration of the two banks. The main task was to retain the largely French speaking customer base of the Bank of Hawaii and merge the operations with ANZ’s existing branches. This was achieved although a 7.3 earthquake shortly after the deal was completed did make us wonder if we had offended some of the local gods!
We tried three times to open a branch in Noumea. The potential was always clear but it proved impossible to meet the group’s performance benchmarks in an economy that operated like a bit of Europe dropped into the Pacific. A branch would prove to be a bridge too far, but I was honoured to be asked to return from retirement in 2005 to open our representative office there.
In the end I spent 13 years under the Grindlays banner, two under Stanbic and 17 under ANZ, but always felt I was part of the same corporate family. This sense of belonging is perhaps more important overseas, where connections with family and friends are necessarily remote. Over the years ANZ has shown that it can adapt to changing business strategies and still retain its unique identity. Future ANZROC members may well work for many banks, rather than having a single employer, but I am sure the spirit of ANZ will endure and prosper.
It is as a proud ANZ man that I now ask you to raise your glasses in a toast to - the ANZ Bank!
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