ANZ’s Michelle Jablko a CFO for the times

ANZ CFO Michelle Jablko is an unusual investment banker. For a start, she’s female in a male-dominated profession.

ANZ chief financial officer Michelle Jablko.

Michelle Jablko is an unusual investment banker.

For a start, she’s female in a male-dominated profession.

Her former boss at UBS, Matthew Grounds, also says she has a “big brain”, but in an industry known for its Everest-like egos doesn’t “show it off”.

Finally, and through no fault of her own, eruptions tend to occur on the rare occasions that she switches jobs.

On Tuesday, the day after ANZ Bank announced it had lured Jablko from Greenhill ­Australia to become chief financial ­officer, the stellar stock­broking career of Bell Potter institutional share flogger Angus Aitken blew up.

True to form, Aitken began his morning note to clients with a cutting observation.

“ANZ — that new CFO has to be one of the dumber appointments I have seen ... another reason to not own this stock — Sell ANZ,” he riffed in an email.

Aitken, though, was only warming up.

He railed against Jablko’s last deal — law firm Slater & Gordon’s disastrous, $1.3 billion takeover of Quindell assets in Britain — noting the assets were now worth “bugger all”, and said that investment bankers were “crap” at most things in the listed-company sector.

The next day, ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott “liked” a tweet posted by his head of corporate affairs, Paul Edwards, that asked if sexism was alive and well in stockbroking. Edwards wondered if the Jablko note would have been written about a similarly qualified man.

Aitken turned up to work at his Aurora Place office in Sydney on Thursday morning but left soon after, most likely to never return.

A little over two years ago, in early 2014, Jablko was finishing six months’ gardening leave from UBS after Greenhill and its then-rainmakers Simon Mordant and Ron Malek had helped convince her to join the firm.

When she finally walked through Greenhill’s front door, Mordant and Malek almost met her on the way out, having got fed up with the dead hand of US ­ownership.

Jablko was quickly elevated to co-head of Greenhill with Roger Feletto, and within a year Mordant and Malek would set up a rival boutique adviser, Luminis Partners, with fellow Greenhill refugee Jamie Garis.

What to make of all this?

For a start, Jablko, who declined to talk to The Weekend Australian, is a highly capable, 43-year-old investment banker.

She graduated with first-class honours in law and economics from Monash University in Melbourne before spending several years at leading commercial law firm Allens Linklaters.

After that, it was 14 years at UBS where she was mentored by Grounds.

Jablko keeps fit by walking 70 minutes to the office each day, and is a devotee of the unarmed Israeli self-defence system Krav Maga, of which Hollywood couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are big fans. It’s almost trite to say so about an experienced investment banker, but Jablko has her admirers and detractors.

In the latter category are those who have watched the slide in Greenhill’s fortunes since the departure of Mordant, Malek and Garis, and observers of the slow-motion Quindell trainwreck.

Slater & Gordon effectively remains in the hands of its lenders after slashing the value of its British assets by $814 million in April.

For Jablko’s critics, it simply doesn’t wash that due diligence undertaken by Ernst & Young failed to recognise the true value of Quindell’s fee revenue and work-in-progress, which led to an eight-month accounting review and adverse findings by the corporate watchdog.

“It’s absolutely the adviser’s job to take the due diligence and understand what it means for the value of the bid,” a rival adviser says.

Against that, Jablko gets glowing tributes from Grounds at UBS, and Melbourne retail tycoon and long-standing client Solomon Lew. Lew, the nation’s 15th richest individual with $2.1bn, says he was introduced to Jablko by Grounds and has known her for more than a decade — a period in which his wealth has been greatly enhanced by a string of profitable deals.

Jablko has mostly acted for Lew in tandem with UBS banker Jon Mant, the partner of Turnbull government minister Kelly O’Dwyer.

Among their hits have been the $130m sale of the Witchery fashion chain to Gresham Private Equity in 2006, and, eight years later, the $190m profit from the sale of the billionaire’s stakes in David Jones and Country Road to South African retailer Woolworths.

Lew can’t speak highly enough of Jablko, saying she’s “extremely capable and diligent, highly ethical and has an unbelievable Rolodex”.

“Michelle makes herself available 18 hours a day, seven days a week,” he says. “She’s got a great capacity to grasp the complexity of a transaction, and I think ANZ is extremely fortunate to have ­secured her.

“We’re not that happy to have lost her, but obviously ANZ thinks she has the potential to follow in Shayne Elliott’s footsteps and become chief executive.”

Lew squarely addresses the speculation that Jablko might have pushed too hard on Quindell to secure a handsome fee.

“Look, Michelle is all about longevity. I’ve never had a discussion with her about fees — she believes the fees will come if she does a good job.”

Over at UBS, it’s understood the investment bank would have had Jablko back if things hadn’t worked out to her satisfaction at Greenhill or ANZ.

Grounds says she’s intelligent, considered and “great with ­people”.

“She’s got a big brain and a real ability to cut through the noise and get to the heart of an issue quickly,” he says.

“I’m sure she’ll be a great asset for ANZ.”

Despite the rave reviews, Jab­lko’s pure investment banking pedigree makes her a left-field CFO appointment for a major bank — a point colourfully made in Aitken’s career-ending email.

ANZ, though, has a huge and complex asset-sale program under way, with $5bn of partnership interests in Asia to offload, and is conducting a strategic review of its wealth division.

Elliott explained the rationale for his recruitment of Jablko in an in-house video, where he talked about the challenge of reshaping the business portfolio.

“I’ve got a great team of people but we need to augment that team by bringing in new skills; skills that are really relevant for the task ahead,” Elliott said.

“Michelle comes with terrific experience, she has been a very close and senior adviser to some of Australia’s most leading business people.

“She’s got real experience in corporate finance, in mergers and acquisitions, in equity and debt capital raising, and she knows Australia and the region incredibly well, plus she’s a great individual and terrific person.”

The task at ANZ is reminiscent of the challenge at National Australia Bank undertaken by Craig Drummond, also a former investment banker.

Aitken also had a view on the validity of any comparison between Jablko and Drummond, noting that Drummond had been a market-leading banking analyst for 20 years and had also led Goldman Sachs in Australia as well as Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

So the point arises: is an investment banking career the right pedigree for a CFO role at a commercial bank?

Drummond, who was holidaying in Malta earlier this week before starting as Medibank Private chief executive on July 4, says the right attributes for a major-bank CFO role include a real interest in — and attention to — detail.

There must be an ability to “lift your vision” beyond the next quarter to understand how capital should be allocated, and a “tough and relentless, yet collaborative” personality.

“In my experience, investment banking nurtured the first two attributes, with the latter aspect something that is gathered through a career of experiences,” Drummond says.

“There is no question in my mind that a great CFO today has outstanding people in support and a clear deputy CFO, but that said, the board and CEO’s reasonable expectation of their CFO should be that they are over the detail of all matters financial and strategic.”

Drummond concedes the CFO role has been transformed over the past few years.

“But let’s not kid ourselves,” he says.

“The individual still has to be highly numerate with accounting qualifications and be involved in the technical accounting detail, as their primary responsibility is to produce a set of true and fair financial accounts that all stakeholders have confidence in.”

From all accounts, Jablko will have a strong deputy in Shane Buggle, who was one of the internal candidates for the CFO job.

After restructuring the position that he previously held, ­Elliott’s intentions are also clear.

Divisional CFOs at ANZ used to report to the group CFO but they will now report to Buggle, freeing up Jablko to do what she does best.

It’s all set up for her to make an impact, but in a way that’s quite different to the events of this week.