ANZ bank parliamentary enquiry: CEO Nuno Matos opens up on scrapped bonuses, redundancies
ANZ new chief executive Nuno Matos has declared he wanted to be “part of the pain” in giving up a near $1 million cash bonus at the same time as he made 4,500 staff and contractors redundant.
At a parliamentary Economics Committee on Wednesday, Mr Matos told Ed Husic MP that none of the bank’s senior management got any short-term bonuses in response to a string of regulatory scandals in prior years.
“When we published the remuneration report of ANZ, you saw that all management got zero compensation, was a zero to everyone, including myself, because I asked the board to be part of the pain,” said Mr Matos. “Because I wanted to show clearly that I was part of the team I wanted to lead by example.”
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.In total ANZ’s current and senior management team gave up $33.4 million in cash and share payments with former chief executive Shayne Elliott forced to give up $13.5 million of the total.
Redundancies
Mr Matos said the 4500 redundancies, equivalent to more than 10 per cent of the bank’s workforce, were necessary to reduce duplication of roles and simplify the bank.
“It’s not something I am proud of, it’s not something a human being likes to do,” Mr Matos said of the redundancies. “The company was and still is too complex, there were a lot of initiatives that were not aligned to the objective of the company.”
Since joining ANZ in July 2025, Mr Matos’ radical overhaul has also included the departure of four out of nine top staff on its executive committee and a deal with corporate regulator ASIC to pay $240 million in fines related to misconduct at the bank.
“Our shortcomings are unacceptable and the question is why did they happen?” he said. “We need to understand root causes of situation, it was important to me to understand why did that happen.”
Investors have cheered Mr Matos’ plans to overhaul the bank to bid the shares up to a record high of $38.85 on November 12. Since then they have eased back to a closing price of $35.85 on Wednesday.
More to come...
