ANZ boasts 14 per cent half-year cash profit increase after CEO Nuno Matos cut 3500 jobs

ANZ’s new cost-cutting chief executive Nuno Matos has boasted that simplifying its banking business is paying off with a much stronger half-year profit following mass retrenchments during a time of global uncertainty.

The financial captain, who took over the helm of Australia’s fourth biggest bank a year ago this month, used his opening four months in the job to slash 3500 technology jobs, with the last of the retrenched staff finishing at the end of April 2026.

His strategy of getting the tough decisions out of the way early appears to be working with ANZ’S first half-year cash profit of $3.78 billion up by 14 per cent, when the six months to March 31 were compared with the six months to September 30.

With significant cost items included, the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group made a statutory profit of $3.65 billion, which was up 9 per cent.

“We simplified our business and reduced duplication and settled long-standing regulatory matters,” Mr Matos told the Australian Securities Exchange on Friday.

“We have also made significant progress to reduce duplication and simplify the bank, while continuing to make progress in improving non-financial risk management.”

The reporting period covered the first full month of the US-led Iran war, which is likely to spark another interest rate hike from the Reserve Bank of Australia on Tuesday next week, to tackle inflation in March rising to a near three-year high annual pace of 4.6 per cent.

“Our customers understand the world is more complex. Our corporate customers have been preparing for shocks, building capital and liquidity, maintaining flexibility and improving supply chain resilience,” Mr Matos said.

The RBA’s two rate hikes in February and March are yet to see an increase in struggling borrowers with ANZ.

“We have not seen any material increase in new customers entering hardship or receiving assistance,” he said.

“However, we recognise that some individuals and businesses are navigating these challenging circumstances.”

Capital.com senior financial market analyst Kyle Rodda said shareholders were broadly supportive of Mr Matos cutting back on the ANZ Plus technology vision of his predecessor Shayne Elliott so ANZ could focus more on providing mortgages.

“You hire a particular CEO for the strategy that the board is wanting to take the bank in and in this instance, it’s to be a lean, focused traditional bank that sort of sticks to its knitting,” he told The Nightly.

“So far, investors are deeming his performance as fulfilling that kind of mandate.

“Investors have really rewarded the company for more or less its cost cutting regime and the fact that there was the perception that organisation, just like every other bank, has a fair bit of fat to trim, that it’s doing that successfully.”

During the last half-year result, for the six months to September 30, ANZ had taken a $1.1 billion profit hit to cover staff redundancies, penalties for deceptive conduct in the bond market, new costs for buying Suncorp, dealing with issues in Indonesia and writing off a cash rewards program.

This included a $250 million penalty for wrongly reporting bond trading data to the Federal Government.

Mr Matos on Friday said reforming ANZ’s culture would be a key priority, following a November report into ANZ by IBM Consulting’s Promontory group.

“Today we also release the first Promontory independent assurance report confirming ANZ’s progress as we improve our non-financial risk management practices and risk culture, following the release of the establishment report in November,” he said.

“We have made important steps forward and continuing to uplift our practices is a key priority.”

ANZ shares were 0.7 per cent stronger at $36.90 at 10.25am AEST during early trade.

But by 11.42am AEST, the price had plunged 1.3 per cent to $36.17, with investors more focused on next week’s rate rise, that would take the RBA cash rate back to 4.35 per cent for the first time since February last year before the first of three rate cuts.

“If we do see higher interest rates in Australia at the same time that growth starts to falter a little bit, that’s something that’s going to erode bank margins,” Mr Rodda said.

Shareholders received an interim dividend of 83 cents a share, with franking accounting for company tax paid increasing from 70 per cent to 75 per cent.