ANZ’S trust problem festers
When less than half of employees trust the senior leadership in a company there is a problem; and at ANZ New Zealand, it has been left to fester.
Last week, the results of an internal employee survey revealed just 49 per cent of the bank’s staff trust the top brass.
You don’t have to look far to see why.
Spendthrift chief executive David Hisco left the bank in June under a cloud. On Hisco’s departure, chairman Sir John Key divulged a little of the culture of excess that had swaddled the former top banker.
Hisco passed off personal spending as business expenses – wine cellaring and chauffeured cars – and he failed to meet the bank’s ‘‘standard of conduct’’, Key said.
But it is that standard, a ‘‘culture of integrity’’ as ANZ refers to it within and outside the bank, that is souring
employees. It is worth remembering that integrity means something: honesty and more than that, a moral uprightness that demands an even application. You cannot apply integrity in some cases and not others otherwise it ceases to be integrity.
The employee who leaked the results of the internal staff survey to Stuff, and asked for anonymity for fear of reprisal, saw ANZ’S standards as double standards.
For years, close scrutiny has been paid to middlemanagement expenses, the source said, with harsh consequences including dismissal applied to such breaches as small amounts of personal spending found on company credit cards.
As it turns out, many of the ANZ executives responsible for enforcing those rules for the rank and file were wellpositioned to know that things were more elastic at the top.
Following Hisco’s departure, investigative reporting by Stuff quickly revealed the misrepresented expenses acknowledged by ANZ told only a partial tale. And details of further transactions show the extent to which other ANZ executives knew of the excess.
Senior executives Antonia Watson, Felicity Evans and Annis O’brien all knew, or ought to have known, that David Hisco’s wife, Deborah Walsh, bought a six-bedroom Auckland mansion from the bank two years ago for close to $4 million less than the home’s rateable value. The executives were directors of Arawata Assets at the time, the wholly owned subsidiary of ANZ that owned 269 St Heliers Bay Rd until the 2017 sale. It wasn’t just a rogue transaction covered up by Hisco – the bank and its executives signed off.
Evans, who was the general manager of human resources, was closely tied to policing integrity at the time. She left the bank a year ago.
Annis O’brien remains a senior executive and responsible for the statutory and regulatory reporting process. How closely did she look at the house sale and how did she conclude it wasn’t a related party transaction that required public disclosure?
Watson, who regularly insists on ‘‘integrity’’ at the bank, has been markedly silent on the sale, despite being promoted to acting chief executive in Hisco’s place, and is understood to be in the running for the permanent position. In her message to staff that accompanied the emailed results of the bank’s ‘‘My Voice’’ survey, Watson insisted ANZ wants to run the bank as openly as possible, reiterating that every staff member should feel comfortable raising concerns.
Why then, employees can only wonder, did she sign off on the house sale to Deborah Walsh? She has yet to explain.
Through a bank spokesman she declined to be interviewed.
The spokesman said the bank sold the house ‘‘based on market valuations done at the time’’.
But he declined to reconcile the difference between the home’s $6.9m sale price and the $10.75m rateable value.
Maybe Watson was in a tough spot, observers like David Tripe, professor of banking at Massey University speculate.
Maybe she was told by parent company ANZ Group in Melbourne what to do; maybe they have warned her to keep her mouth shut now.
The matter is now the subject of an independent review requested in June by banking regulator the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
‘‘We won’t be talking about it [the house sale] until they report back,’’ the spokesman said.
In the meantime, ANZ is expected to to announce Hisco’s permanent replacement sometime in September or October.
Given employees’ disillusionment with the current crop of executives, maybe it is time for an outside hire.