(Bloomberg) -- ANZ Group Holdings Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Shayne Elliott said fears about the “demise of China” as an investment destination are “massively overblown,” with the bank seeing brisk business in the country.
“Our business in China is going great,” Elliott said at an AustCham Singapore event on Wednesday, even as he admitted that operating there is “bumpy” and “complicated.”
The ANZ chief made the comments less than a week after China announced a slew of stimulus measures including interest-rate cuts and liquidity support for stocks to spur a slowing economy, that triggered a dramatic recovery in equity markets and changed the global consensus on the investability of the world’s second-largest economy.
“Every single country in our neighborhood has got some complications going on,” said Elliott, adding that bearing with volatility as a bank is “just what we do.”
“We continue to be treated extraordinarily well in China,” Elliott said. “We’ve got amazing Chinese customers, state-owned and private.”
Most of ANZ’s Asia Pacific business is through institutional banking and its international return-on-equity has grown to mid-teens, from around 3% when Elliott became CEO more than eight years ago. He said in March that Australia’s fourth-largest lender aims to expand its presence in India, Vietnam and in China — where it has around 300 employees — to keep pace with the growing needs of its clients there.
ANZ’s institutional division’s boom in the region has been among Elliott’s top achievements during his tenure along with the bank’s A$4.9 billion ($3.4 billion) takeover of retail lender Suncorp Bank at home, though those achievements have recently been overshadowed recently by a series of scandals in ANZ’s trading arm.
He told Bloomberg Television on Monday that banning alcohol at the bank, for example, following complaints of inebriated staff on the trading floor, would be difficult to implement with most of its employees dealing with clients.
“Ultimately, of course, you know, this reflects badly on the organization. It’s impacted our company and I’m accountable for that. And so yes, there are consequences and we’ll work through what those consequences will look like,” Elliott said at the Wednesday event.
“You can’t change culture overnight. It’s not about what the boss says or on a poster or the training programs. Basically what we’re doing is a series of interventions and change over long, long period of time,” he added.
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