ANZ eyes more deep staff cuts

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

In the next three years ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott will get rid of another 8000 of the bank’s employees — almost a quarter of the big four’s workforce.

ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott.

That’s if Elliott follows through on the until-now secret high-level discussions he had with his chairman David Gonski and the rest of the ANZ board in 2017.

Margin Call has confirmed that in those board discussions, Elliott canvassed reducing the bank’s workforce by almost 20,000 to between 25,000 and 30,000.

That range — which the bank stresses are not “targets” — were later relayed by Elliott to his executive team.

“While we don’t have any specific reduction programs or targets for the group, we will continue to focus on improving productivity, particularly where we can provide customers a better service through the use of technology,” said an ANZ spokesman.

Elliott’s record in the two years since those discussions demonstrate he’s serious.

And it makes the McKinsey-advised plan being worked on by CBA boss Matt Comyn to reduce staff by 10,000 — revealed by Margin Call last week — look trifling.

When Elliott took over the Melbourne-headquartered bank in January 2016 its total workforce was just over 50,000, according to its annual report.

As of the end of September, that number was down to 37,860.

Insiders at the bank expect Elliott will reach the 25,000-30,000 “not a target” target within three years, thanks to a mix of whizzy AI-adoption, old-fashioned branch closure, divestment of clunky businesses and plenty of redundancies.

If so, Elliott could have halved the headcount of the bank he inherited.

Under the leadership of Elliott and his scalpel-wielding CFO Michelle Jablko, ANZ has closed most of its retail business in Asia (while keeping the institutional business and its giant customers Alibaba, Tencent and the rest).

It’s also in the process of flogging its scandalous wealth and super businesses.

Then there’s another sort of reduction.

Outside of ANZ, it’s called making people redundant.

But that’s too old-fashioned for Elliott’s ANZ, which instead claims it is making its staff more “agile”.

That involves reducing the number of staff at the bank’s Docklands headquarters, taking their permanent desks away from them and — no joke — forcing them to do daily “ceremonies” to celebrate their work.

The bank paid Boston Consulting Group — which also advised their rival NAB on a 6000-employee redundancy plan — to come up with that tribal weirdness.

This week, some of those staff members still employed at ANZ are moving into its second Docklands activity-based working dungeon, dubbed “Core D”, all the better to drink the BCG-brewed Kool-Aid.

While investors couldn’t care less about the MBA spin, they are thrilled Elliott continues to pull costs out of the $74.4 billion bank.

And if the ANZ CEO can get praised for it, too — while NAB jumps off The Bridge — so much the better.

Pushing the envelope

Christine Holgate’s most senior executive in her Melbourne headquarters has fled Australia Post. Was it the carol singing, the cost cutting or something else?

Something else, said Holgate, as she revealed in a staff email that her chief financial officer Janelle Hopkins had resigned yesterday morning to take a job as the CFO of the $10bn digital real estate classifieds giant REA Group.

“Janelle has chosen to take her next career step, being a CFO of a publicly listed organisation,” wrote Holgate.

It’s tricky timing for Holgate.

Janelle Hopkins, Erin Kelly, Annette Carey, Christine Holgate, Nicole Sheffield and Susan Davies. Picture: Julian Kingma

As she told the Senate only two weeks ago, Hopkins was leading Australia Post’s cost reduction program (pulling out $250 million this year, promised Holgate).

That gave Hopkins — who last year took home $1.6m in the role — oversight of the cost-cutting consultants from PwC and KordaMentha who are helping out on the structurally challenged, government-owned enterprise’s upcoming corporate plan.

Margin Call has heard KordaMentha’s team may recommend that more than 15 per cent of the 2600 staff at Australia Post’s Melbourne HQ — almost 400 of them — should pack up their yoga mats and find other work.

Time will tell.

Menzies frenzy

He’s in the fight of his political life but Josh Frydenberg insists that his rivals in the (historically) blue ribbon seat of Kooyong, Julian Burnside and Oliver Yates, aren’t keeping him awake at night.

“I’m sleeping soundly,” the federal Treasurer told Margin Call yesterday, on the ground in his electorate to launch Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics, the latest political tome by our colleague Troy Bramston.

There were no challengers, only admirers, as Frydenberg held court before party faithful inside the Chamber Room of the Hawthorn Arts Centre.

Before an appropriately Liberal audience, Frydenberg described Bramston’s book (his ninth) as “a lesson in leadership” which recounts the life and career of Australia’s longest-serving prime minister and party founder.

“Menzies is without doubt Australia’s greatest Prime Minister,” Frydenberg declared, while his boss Scott Morrison was across town driving diggers in colleague Michael Sukkar’s seat of Deakin.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg speaks during the launch of Troy Bramston’s book, Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics. Picture: Aaron Francis

The Treasurer’s parliamentary colleagues Victorian senators Jane Hume and James Paterson and Member for Goldstein Tim Wilson were all along, dragging down the average age in the room.

Also there was Victorian Liberal member for Kew Tim Smith and now former local member John Pesutto, who was beaten at last year’s state election in the previously safe seat of Hawthorn. Ron Wilson, David Kemp and Richard Alston were also there.

So how would Bramston compare the great Menzies with his friend Frydenberg, who is something of a custodian of the late PM’s legacy?

“Menzies wouldn’t have had a mullet in the 80s,” Bramston declared to the gathered, “let alone brag about it on Budget night.” Touche.