Perks saga at ANZ leaves us wondering

On the face of it, New Zealand’s largest bank could hardly have made a worse job of accounting for itself. Expenses which ran into the “tens of thousands of dollars” over David Hisco’s nine-year tenure as chief executive at ANZ New Zealand included personal use of chauffeur-driven cars and the cost of storing his wine collection back home in Australia.

Those of us looking on can surely be excused for being left wondering about the situation. For instance, are banks just asking to be further hated for their seemingly insatiable drive for profit and profligate monitoring?

This is an operation which made a record $1.98 billion profit to the year September 2018. In the same period.

Hisco’s remuneration was $3.76 million. And ANZ’s Australian parent last month reported a first-half net profit of A$3.17b.

The bank’s Melbourne headquarters has been occupied with coughing up A$175m to compensate customers for bad behaviour revealed by Australia’s damning Royal Commission. And another A$533m worth of customer repayments are to be handed over in the second half of this year.

But back to this country.

The full details of Hisco’s spending, and what on, are not being volunteered.

ANZ holds just under a third of New Zealand’s mortgages, whose interest payments have helped underwrite chauffeurdriven wheels. But what else?

ANZ chairman Sir John Key tried to explain things by saying the heart of the issue was not the expenditure itself, but the way the spending appeared in the bank’s accounts. Key said it looked like a business expense when it was a personal expense.

Trying to argue that personal expenses can be business expenses reaches far beyond trying to argue a pair of undies are togs just because there's a beach nearby.

Apparently, Hisco believed he had a spoken agreement with the previous group chief executive of the Australian bank over the use of chauffeur-driven cars. Try taking a loan from any bank on that kind of basis.

The timing of the disclosure also leaves questions. ANZ staff were told Hisco was taking extended leave for health reasons on May 30. His departure was announced on June 17.

Asked about the delay in telling the Reserve Bank and announcing Hisco was leaving, an ANZ spokesman said it was because its review was “ongoing” and had been complicated by Hisco’s medical leave.

Perhaps, as well as the lesson from forfeiting unvested equity worth around $6.4m, Hisco — deserved or not — is also learning about being brought to account in an era of mistrust in banks.