Nuno Matos has made it clear he won’t die wondering as he attempts to whip ANZ Bank into shape.

Whether it is by shaking up the bank’s executive ranks, driving organisational restructures, slashing jobs, or unveiling an expected strategic revamp next month, the ANZ boss is ringing in major changes.

But until this week, the Portuguese-born banker’s comments and actions had generally been of more interest to the financial press, rather than the wider media.

That all changed on Tuesday, when the public got its view of what the 57-year-old global executive has planned for the banking giant, and Matos was delivering a tough message.

About 3500 jobs and 1000 contractors are to be axed, and more change is on the horizon as Matos tries to close the gap between ANZ and its rivals.

The job cuts were the most dramatic action Matos has taken since joining the bank in May, and this week he also made his first substantive public media appearance since starting in the job.

So, who is Matos, and what experience and traits does he bring to the job? Why is he so intent on shaking up ANZ? And what other changes might be coming for the blue bank?

Matos, who succeeded the New Zealand-born Shayne Elliott, has been a banker for more than 30 years, after starting his global finance career in Portugal’s central bank. Australia is the 10th country he has lived in, and he has spent almost half his life outside Portugal.

His wife Maria is Peruvian, they have two grown-up sons, and he has said that at home they speak three languages. “We are kind of a United Nations at home,” he said last year. He’s an ocean swimmer, a keen reader of history, and he and his wife are looking for a home in Melbourne (and living in the Park Hyatt while they search for a place, The Australian Financial Review reported).

Matos has said that ambition is one of his most important leadership beliefs,. About a decade ago, he started aspiring to run an international organisation, or a big domestic bank in an important market.

He got a chance to realise this ambition when ANZ’s board, chaired by Paul O’Sullivan, picked the banker as ANZ’s next chief executive late last year, soon after he had resigned from one of the biggest banks in the world, HSBC.

Matos had risen to run HSBC’s personal banking and wealth arm, and was reportedly seen as a contender to run HSBC, but missed out on the top job and left the London-headquartered giant in August 2024.

He is paid $2.5 million a year to run ANZ, with the potential to make more than $8 million including bonuses, depending on whether he hits performance targets.

While ANZ is one of the biggest companies in Australia with 43,000 globally, at HSBC Matos was responsible for a business with twice as many employees. He also led the HSBC response to a massive money laundering scandal in Mexico – a high-stakes clean-up task that lasted years.

Although he had not experienced Australia’s banking market firsthand before taking the job, he said this week he had observed it from Asia. One market participant who has met Matos says he appears keen to listen – in contrast to some offshore chief executives who have appeared to think they know what is best when they turned up in Australia. They say that in person, Matos comes across as low-key, serious and analytical. “He’s very different to other CEOs who have come from abroad to Australia. He was really interested in what people have to say,” they said.

While we don’t know all his plans for ANZ yet – key details are expected at a strategy day next month – Matos has flagged some key principles. Some of his top priorities are to get the bank moving faster and to make its culture more performance-driven.

He has suggested ANZ staff keep presentations to no more than five pages, and staff were also told meetings should have a clear purpose and agenda. The bank has also recently reminded staff they needed to turn up to the office at least 50 per cent of the time to get a bonus. Like many other corporate bosses, he believes spending some time in the office is important for career development, as well as mental health.

“It’s not easy to observe and to evolve if you are on Zooms and Teams … that face-to-face conversation is much more effective,” he said last month, according to The West Australian.

Even before this week’s deep job cuts were announced, some ANZ staff had criticised or ridiculed Matos’ approach, with some hitting the chat platform Reddit to vent. Giving him nicknames such as “Papi” and “El Nuno”, some of these staff members anonymously made fun of the boss, while railing against the changes he is bringing.

The Finance Sector Union has also been highly critical of the speed at which Matos is moving. The union said the pace of change pushed through by him caused last month’s infamous email chaos – staff found out they were being sacked through an automated email telling them to return their laptop.

Banking analysts and investors are generally more supportive of Matos’ changes, though some say his plans are not without risk.

They believe change is needed mainly because ANZ is underperforming. Its shares have lagged the bigger three rivals and several bank-watchers think there is room to reduce costs.

MST Marquee analyst Brian Johnson believes there is “a degree of over-staffing” in the bank, but he had thought cuts would involve about 2000 jobs, rather than the 3500 target Matos announced. Johnson says there is “execution risk” that comes with cutting as deeply as this, but overall, he says the status quo at ANZ was not acceptable to shareholders.

“I actually think he’s a change agent. I think that he is genuinely motivated about fixing it up,” Johnson says of Matos.

There has been widespread speculation among analysts that with the job cuts announced this week, an October strategy day will include details about more financial targets for the bank. Matos has also indicated that a big priority will be to deal with the expensive digital platform ANZ Plus, which has underwhelmed the market. Some think he could pull back on the ambitious tech project.

Improving how the bank deals with non-financial risk is also high on Matos’ to-do list.

The bank is still awaiting the results of a regulatory investigation into potential “conduct issues” in its markets business, and is holding $1 billion in extra capital due to the banking regulator’s long-standing concerns about weaknesses in ANZ’s risk management.

Investors say there are plenty of areas where ANZ needs work, and some said this week that Matos could cut the bank’s dividend as part of a “clearing of the decks”.

Importantly, Matos said this week that ANZ also had many strengths – such as being the most international of the Australian banks and having a flagship institutional bank – but he added that “we need to do some things better”.

“Our ambition is to put the house in order,” he said.

All up, it seems clear ANZ is in for a period of upheaval – and Matos is unlikely to shy away from pushing through tough the changes.

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