The Australian bank explained that the price it would receive from the transaction represented a price-to-book ratio of about 1.1 times SRCB’s net assets as of December 2015.
As of 3:25 p.m.in Sydney (0425 GMT), ANZ shares were up about 1.8 percent, at A$30.96.
“The sale reflects our strategy to simplify our business and improve capital efficiency”, Graham Hodges, ANZ’s deputy CEO, said in Tuesday’s news release. The stock gained 8.9 percent previous year. Last month, it agreed to buy HK$6.15 billion (US$792 million) of shares in a Chinese asset manager.
A year earlier it acquired a 13.6 per cent stake in China Bohai Bank from China Ocean Shipping.
CEO Shayne Elliott has wasted no time in winding back the strategy, and the legacy, of his predecessor Mike Smith who aggressively pushed the “super-regional” strategy in the face of questions from analysts about the negative impact on the bank’s returns.
ANZ said its relationship with SRCB, in which it had acquired the stake in September 2007 had been a successful one both financial and commercially. It is subject to closing conditions and regulatory approvals and is expected to be completed by mid-2017. The bank had set a target to earn as much as 30 percent of profits from outside Australia and New Zealand by this year.
Meanwhile back in October, ANZ said it is ready to sell its retail and wealth-management trade in China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore and Taiwan to Singapore’s DBS Group Holdings Ltd.to emphasis instead on institutional banking in the zone.
ANZ first invested in Shanghai Rural in 2006, during John McFarlane’s tenure as CEO. No comment was immediately available from China Cosco Shipping or Sino-Poland.
