AOFM met ANZ four times since bond trading scandal, not twice

The AOFM has disclosed two more meetings with senior bankers at ANZ, after The Australian revealed the government’s debt agency had met with the frozen-out bank.

The AOFM met ANZ staff four times in four months. Picture: Getty Images

The federal government’s debt agency, the Australian Office of Financial Management, met with staff at ANZ four times in the past four months, amid a regulatory probe over possible market manipulation.

The AOFM has revealed its staff, including at times agency chief executive Anna Hughes, met with ANZ on four occasions, after earlier telling The Australian only two such meetings occurred.

These meetings included a call on December 17 with Ms Hughes and head of funding, strategy and research Matt Wheadon, who spoke to ANZ’s institutional bank boss Mark Whelan and the bank’s head of markets, Anshul Sidher.

ANZ Markets managing director Anshul Sidher

The call is described as a five-minute conversation, and involved ANZ informing the AOFM about “staff changes at the bank” after a shuffling of roles in the markets division in the wake of the ASIC probe.

Several traders have departed ANZ’s markets team since the bank’s role as joint-lead manager in a $14bn sovereign bond placement in 2023 came to light.

ASIC is investigating whether traders at ANZ manipulated the bond market to the detriment of taxpayers and to the benefit of the bank, which ANZ denies.

ASIC is also examining how ANZ provided incorrect records of its trading, overstating the performance of the bank’s bond operations by $54.4bn to the AOFM as part of efforts to win business from the government debt agency.

It was the AOFM that referred concerns about adverse market movements to ASIC in the weeks after the 2023 bond placement.

Mr Sidher, who was present on the calls with Ms Hughes, was elevated to the head of markets in June 2023.

AOFM CEO Anna Hughes

The AOFM on January 29 met with ANZ’s balance sheet team, which is a separate unit to the debt capital markets team responsible for the ill-fated bond placement, as part of an investor roadshow run by the agency.

These came ahead of two previously disclosed meetings between the AOFM and ANZ, on February 5 and March 12.

ANZ is presently frozen out of the AOFM’s auctions, previously worth almost $100m a year to the bank, and has failed to record any fee-earning work in 2025, according to data provided by industry publication KangaNews.

Market sources noted the AOFM must refinance nearly $80bn in government borrowing this year. This being so, they observed, there is huge appetite broadly across the financial sector for Australian government debt.

An AOFM spokeswoman said the agency “cannot comment on ANZ and the ongoing ASIC investigation”.

“However, as mentioned in our previous correspondence, ANZ (through its debt capital markets team) is a market maker in our Treasury bonds, and we continue to engage with them based on this,” she said.

“As a market maker ANZ may provide AOFM with economic and market research, as well as opportunities for investor engagement.”