It is a government desire to see an expansion of our service offering particularly into Asia and particularly into China, Mr McCarthy told InvestorDaily.
“It is clearly a theme for government and clearly a theme for sectors,” Mr McCarthy said, citing ANZ chief executive Mike Smith’s Asian strategy as an example.
“We have seen that with Mike Smith talking about the potential for Asian expansion. It has worked for him,” he said.
“He took lot of pain on this strategy, particularly when the Aussie dollar was strong, because those revenues were being hurt by the strong dollar, but with the dollar now down around 90c to the US, and increasing revenues coming into Australia for ANZ, I’d say that the leadership at the other big banks is watching the strategy very closely and I suspect that they will be mimicking it very soon.”
In 2007, ANZ’s Mike Smith launched the ‘Super Regional Strategy’. By 2017 the bank hopes to draw between 25 per cent and 30 per cent of group revenue from its strategy.
The export of Australian financial services to the Asia Pacific region has been a key theme for the Financial Services Council (FSC).
In early December last year, FSC chief executive John Brogden said the region represented massive potential for the export of financial services.
