ANZ absent from welcome ball for Anna Bligh

Illustration: Rod Clement.

Which bank didn’t make it along to the debutante ball NAB boss Andrew Thorburn threw to welcome incoming Australian Bankers’ Association boss Anna Bligh?

On this one the advertising tag is wrong. ABA board member and Commonwealth Bank chief executive Ian Narev was along at the cocktail event held in the lofty heights of NAB’s Sydney tower on Thursday night.

Fellow ABA board member and Westpac boss Brian Hartzer was on a flight back from Hong Kong where he had been on an investor roadshow, so sent his apologies. A gaggle from Westpac was sent in his place, led by outgoing deputy CEO Phil ­Coffey.

As surprised guests at Thorburn’s event discussed with each other, only one of Australia’s big four was not represented: ANZ. Not one of the bank’s almost 50,000 employees attended.

ABA board member and ANZ chief executive Shayne ­Elliott was in Melbourne on an unspecified prior engagement. Longstanding ANZ government relations supremo Gerard Brown didn’t make it, either.

Incredibly, not one of his 10-strong executive team were along to salute the reign of outgoing ABA CEO Steve Munchenberg or to welcome Bligh, the former Labor Queensland premier, who is replacing Munch on Monday.

Was the ANZ boss hosting vegan tofu night for the troops at Docklands?

The bank’s absence reignited industry rumours that it wasn’t just Treasurer Scott Morrison’s office that took issue with ABA chairman Thorburn’s closely guarded appointment of Bligh.

On a happier note, all agreed that NAB’s catering was superb.

Movers and shakers

Also among the crowd at Thorburn’s debutante ball was ASIC chairman Greg Medcraft, Peter Salt of recruiter Salt & Shein (who was fawned over by ambitious flaks) and APRA boss Wayne Byres, who only 12 hours after sharing the night with the big four bankers (less ANZ) at the champagne event clamped down on their interest-only loans. Cheers to the cheeky bugger.

Changing the subject

There was an overlooked ANZ connection to the portrait of former speaker Peter Slipper that was unveiled in Parliament House this week in a ceremony that was bizarre even by current Canberra standards.

The oil painting of the scandal-plagued Slipper was the work of 12-time Archibald Prize finalist Paul Newton.

The subject of one of Newton’s most celebrated works is none other than ANZ chairman David Gonski, who sits on the other end of the respectability index to the former turncoat member for Fisher.

“From conversations I had with people acquainted with him, there was never a bad word said. He seems to be universally well regarded and respected,” said Newton.

No prizes for guessing which of the painter’s two mentioned subjects that comment was about.

Among many of his prized gigs, Gonski is the president of the Art Gallery of NSW Board, which, of course, hosts the Archibalds, the nation’s premier portrait prize.

Entries for the ANZ-sponsored Archies close on May 1. Could Slipper in his finery finally win Newton the big one?

The history boy

Changing banks to Brian Hartzer’s Westpac, which turns 200 next week.

The big day is April 8, next Saturday. A year ago, when Westpac turned 199, the bank was gifted legal action by Greg Medcraft’s corporate cop ASIC and a telling off by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at its harbourside celebration. Happy birthday!

It would be surprising if either are along at the Bicentennial Ball at inner-city Sydney’s Carriageworks next weekend. A more likely guest is Anna Bligh. The Westpac knees-up seems a fitting way for the Sydneysider to finish her first week leading the big bank lobby.

As part of the celebrations, a history of the bank was commissioned. Hartzer, who majored in history at Ivy League uni Princeton and has been a frequent visitor to Westpac’s enormous archive on Sydney’s north shore, was closely involved in the project.

Copies of the book are now with all staff who wanted one. Keep an eye out for it on the bestseller lists.

Pratt’s classical hit

To another birthday: Visy billionaire Anthony Pratt turns 57 in just over a week. But there’s much more exciting stuff going on in the Pratt universe.

Tonight at Hamer Hall, in front of a crowd of 2000, the billionaire is going to conduct the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra as it plays Richard Wagner’s The Ride of the Valkyries.

Cinema buffs will know that as the one from Apocalypse Now.

Pratt’s conducting will open the show Classical Hits (And Other Bits), for which Pratt is an executive producer. The aim of the night — which will mostly be conducted by MSO associate conductor Benjamin Northey — is to turn people on to classical music, a worthy aim.

Pratt’s late father Richard Pratt, in his youth, had a stint on Broadway in Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. His mother Jeanne is one of the most generous, and loved, patrons in Melbourne art circles.

But tonight is the son’s turn.

Visy insiders tell us he has been spotted this week listening to Wagner on his iPhone, conducting with his finger.

“He’s taking this very seriously — in a fun way,” an insider told us.

Should be something.