After axing 3500 jobs, ANZ chief’s grand plan has a long way to go

“I must confess, it’s a very emotional moment to me. This is a moment where you feel you achieve your dreams.”

It was just before Christmas 2024 and ANZ Bank’s incoming chief executive Nuno Matos was giving his 40,000 future colleagues a taste of how much passion and ambition he would bring to the role in his first interview with the bank’s communications platform Bluenotes.

The veteran Portuguese-born banker had been overlooked for the top job at HSBC, and had been picked by ANZ’s board as the next boss, to replace former chief executive Shayne Elliott.

While ANZ will never be mistaken for a global giant like HSBC, Matos noted it has bank businesses of significant scale in two developed economies, Australia and New Zealand, plus a world-class institutional business for corporate and government clients which is a serious player in Asia.

“Now to capture that, we will need to execute fast, with pace, with precision, trying to get the last mile with the performance-driven approach, with a lot of passion. And I would like to invite everybody to that journey,” he said before wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. “I wish to see you all very, very soon.”

Yet for thousands of employees and contractors, this would be their last festive season at ANZ. The warning signs were there.

ANZ chairman Paul O’Sullivan had spent years helming a bank that underwhelmed the market with a performance that lagged its Big Four rivals.

ANZ had also faced a long-running regulatory probe into alleged misconduct in the bank’s markets business, and ANZ’s role in a government bond deal. (In 2025 this culminated in a record $240 million penalty agreed to in a settlement of four legal cases from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission).

ANZ needed a cultural and business revamp, and O’Sullivan clearly was not bringing Matos on board to play Father Christmas.

It soon became apparent what Matos meant by executing fast and at pace.

He was on board months earlier than expected, taking the helm in May last year.

By September, ANZ announced it would slash costs by sacking 3500 employees and another 1000 contractors.

This brutal cull, which Matos has described as very difficult but necessary for the bank’s long-term viability, is on track to be finished by the end of this month.

It has already delivered a pay-off for ANZ investors. Shares, which were trading around $28 when he joined, soared above $40 in February as the market realised the almost immediate impact of Matos’ reset of the bank’s wages bill.