ANZ Financial News

Swift is in the process of working with central banks and financial institutions on beta tests of an experimental method for interlinking CBDCs with existing fiat infrastructures. The cooperative’s Nick Kerigan argued that interoperability should be front of mind early on in the CBDC development process in order to avoid some of the issues that have been seen with national payment systems. David Ballaschk from the Deutsche Bundesbank and Hariram Chakraborthy Janakiraman from ANZ agreed that we will not see a standard CBDC, and that interoperability is the best that can be hoped for.

The main disciplinary body for the major accounting firms says it “does not shy away investigating members in the big four firms” after revealing it sanctioned 17 members from big four accounting firms during the past seven years.

Banks and investors have a new set of guidelines to compare companies’ impact on the natural environment, with the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures releasing a final framework on Tuesday morning to ensure nature is considered alongside financial, operational and climate risks.

Viridios’ $55 million capital raise is bearing fruits. Eddie Listorti’s Australian-based carbon offset investor snapped up a majority stake in climate change consultancy Pangolin Associates on Monday, Street Talk can reveal.

Banks want telecommunication companies and social media platforms to share the surging cost of scams but warn too much focus on victim compensation will “create a honeypot for organised crime”.

By Florence Tan

Jefferies’ head of research Matthew Wilson does not mince words in his assessment of Westpac’s institutional bank.

Australia’s big four bank ANZ is advancing towards a greater adoption of tokenized assets, after successfully completing a test transaction in collaboration with Web3 services platform Chainlink.

PwC Australia’s leadership is trying to stem a rising tide of partners leaving by enforcing a rule that obliges senior staff involved in a “group departure” to a rival firm to pay back the fees they generated in the previous year.

By Alex Lawler

ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott said banks have plenty of capital to fund the energy transition and are more likely to deploy it if the federal government lays down a “coherent” and “co-ordinated approach” on policies seeking to push the economy towards hitting the nation’s climate targets.

Westpac CEO Peter King and Australian Banking Association CEO Anna Bligh met Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Wednesday evening to ask the federal government to implement a new policy the banks are calling the “regulatory grid”.

National Australia Bank will shut down its office in Hong Kong after deciding that Shanghai, Singapore and Tokyo are the preferred regional centres to support its institutional banking clients in Asia.

ANZ, National Australia Bank and Westpac have joined Commonwealth Bank’s calls for global digital platforms to be regulated as payment service providers, pushing back on recent arguments by Apple and Google that they’re merely peripheral players.

By Jing Bian, Xie Yu and Carolina Mandl

When asked by a federal government inquiry if Accenture kept track of its relationships with public sector clients, Peter Burns said not only did the firm do so, but that it was a “common” business practice.

NatWest Group India has appointed Anil Puttegowda as the new Head of Strategy and Transformation for International Hubs. He will be based out of NatWest Group India’s Bengaluru office. Anil brings with him more than three decades of experience in growing technology organisations with a proven track record of transforming global capability centres by driving innovation at scale. Having previously served in senior leadership positions at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., ANZ, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, his experience lies in areas of asset and wealth management, global markets, trading, middle and back-office process re-engineering, sustainable investing, and portfolio management.

ANZ has highlighted rising returns within its institutional bank as evidence of its turnaround, as well as the potential for higher earnings from its more focused strategy, which is prioritising payments and transaction banking services for large companies over lending to them.

Dhiraj Nim, Economist/FX Strategist, ANZ Research, says “the rupee could remain in a tight range of about 82.80, 82.90 to 83.10, the recent lows that have been established. My own forecast for September end is 83 per dollar, but there are a couple of more headwinds out there, apart from the dollar strength, namely the crude oil prices, which have surprised everybody on the upside. The rupee in near term could maintain a bit of weakening bias but we expect the RBI to remain present in the market to smooth out any volatility.”The dollar index has seen quite a bit of surge and is already very close to that 105 mark. Do you see more strength there? Our house view is that the dollar index could be at 105 by the end of this quarter. So, at least in the near term, we do not see significant upside, but let us be mindful that 105 is not a very easy level for any currencies in the emerging market space.

China's Country Garden made interest payments on U.S. dollar bonds hours ahead of a grace period deadline, a person close to the firm said, pulling back from the brink of default for the second time in four days and bringing some relief to the country's crisis-hit property sector. China's largest private property developer failed to pay coupons on the bonds totalling $22.5 million due on Aug. 6, exacerbating fears over how much cash it has left and keeping markets on tenterhooks throughout the bonds' 30-day grace periods. Though the amount was modest, failure to pay would have undermined fragile hope in financial markets that China's steady drip feed of policy stimulus was starting to stabilise the economy and its struggling property market. It would also have raised the prospect of default on other dollar bonds as well as creditor calls to accelerate payments, bondholders and lawyers said, while heightening concern of a spillover into the banking system in the world's second-largest economy. Country Garden also offered on Tuesday to extend repayment of eight onshore bonds worth 10.8 billion yuan ($1.48 billion) by three years, according to people with knowledge of the matter and documents seen by Reuters.

The big four accounting firms earned 99.3 per cent of audit fees paid by Australia’s 200 largest listed companies last year, a proportion described as “to be expected” in any competitive market.