ANZ bank parliamentary enquiry: CEO Nuno Matos opens up on scrapped bonuses, redundancies, net zero

Two of Australia’s banking chiefs have told Canberra’s lawmakers that the rush to clean energy needs to be balanced as both back new gas investments as part of the transition.

At a parliamentary Economics Committee on Wednesday, National Australia Bank chief executive Andrew Irvine said Australia should be “an energy superpower” given its wealth and abundant natural resources.

Mr Irvine also said his bank was ready and willing to lend to new gas development projects amid forecasts that Australia’s eastern states face gas supply shortfalls by 2028.

“We have significant capacity as a bank to lend to natural gas for domestic resources,” Mr Irvine said. “I think there is too much debate here around net zero and energy prices being incompatible with each other and I strongly believe that is the wrong narrative.”

“As a country we need to do a much better job of getting energy to market, both renewable and natural gas to help decarbonise the grid, get rid of coal and become the energy superpower we should be.”

However, Mr Irvine warned local banks’ commitment to net zero targets means the lending may often be done by Korean or Japanese banks. “It’s not that we shouldn’t be digging it up,” he said. “It’s just that we’ll allow another country to take the margin on financing the gas because of our internal (emissions) targets.”

ANZ’s new chief executive Nuno Matos also told the committee that the commitment to deliver more clean energy needs to be balanced otherwise the “medicine could kill the patient.”

The bank’s head of corporate affairs also told the committee ANZ is the nation’s top lender to the resources sector and “proud” of its history in the space, although he also conceded it will reduce its exposure to fossil fuels over time to meet its net zero targets.

ANZ boss takes the pain

Mr Matos also 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 4500 staff and contractors redundant.

Mr Matos told MP Ed Husic that none of the bank’s senior management got any short-term bonuses because of 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,” Mr Matos said. “Because I wanted to show clearly that I was part of the team, I wanted to lead by example.”

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 $13.5m 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.”

Mr Matos also said the job cuts, largely across middle management roles at the bank, were not due to advances in artificial intelligence replacing roles by automating routine tasks.

“It’s not driven at all by AI, it’s driven by eliminating duplication,” he told Labor MP Mr Julie-Ann Campbell. “We had three departments of retail in Australia, we are collapsing two of them, driven by reducing complexity and function that are replicated in the bank, and stopping activity that we should not be doing.”

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 Australian Securities and Investments Commission to pay $240m 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, pushing 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.

Shares in rival Commonwealth Bank have slumped 13 per cent since November 11 when it warned in a quarterly trading update that its net interest profit margin had slipped slightly over the September quarter.

On Tuesday, CBA’s chief executive Matt Comyn claimed that some banks in Australia are now struggling to make a profit on the capital they lend in a metric defined as return on capital employed due to increased competition among multiple other factors.

Mr Husic asked Mr Matos for his views on the idea that excessive regulation or other factors were making it hard for the banks to protect or grow their profits.

“It’s fair to (say) that on average the industry is probably 60 per cent less profitable than it was 10 years ago for many reasons,” Mr Matos said.

“There’s more compliance costs and competition is much fiercer, which is great for customers. Many elements brought (the banks’) return on equity from 14 to 16 per cent to roughly nine to ten per cent, which is broadly aligned with the cost of capital.

“So I think the comment of my peer highlights that trend (declining profit margins) and I think it’s fair to say it’s in the best interests of a nation to have a solid financial system that has capital to lend to the economy.”

Since joining ANZ, Mr Matos has regularly given his view that improving the bank’s profitability is important to its overall performance and told an analyst call in November that he wasn’t keen on one of its cashback on home loan offers.