(15 June 2012 – Australia) Melbourne-based ANZ Bank has decided to hire at least 70 commercial bankers in Asia, expanding the number of relationship managers who serve companies in the region by about one-third in the next year.Seventy commercial bankers were taken on over the past year as A$1.6 trillion of annual regional trade boosts opportunities.
ANZ managing director for commercial banking in Asia Pacific, Ivy Au Yeung said the bank had been successful in attracting talent, with the number growing to around 220 over the past year.
Commerce within Asia increased in the past year as emerging economies such as China and India grew faster than Europe and the US. Trade among Asian countries overshadows the A$1 trillion of business with Europe, according to World Trade Organisation data cited by ANZ.
“The fact that we’ve committed so much over a short period of time” is “a competitive advantage for us today,” Arnab Bhattacharya, ANZ’s head of commercial banking for Hong Kong, said in an interview.
ANZ Bank, one of Australia’s four pillar lenders, seeks to earn as much as 30 percent of profit from the Asia- Pacific region outside Australia and New Zealand by 2017.
It agreed in 2009 to pay about $550 million for Royal Bank of Scotland Group’s units in six Asian countries, including the commercial business in Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia and Hong Kong.