ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott says the $4.9 billion acquisition of Suncorp’s bank is the culmination of a seven-year journey from complexity to simplicity, and now towards growth.

He argues the hard slog of selling 29 businesses, slashing headcount, releasing more than $13 billion in capital from ANZ’s marquee institutional business and shifting to an agile organisational structure years before the pandemic popularised the concept was all about getting ANZ back into the sort of shape where a deal like this was possible.