ANZ Banking Group has agreed to sell its 20 per cent stake in a Chinese lender to China Cosco Shipping and Shanghai Sino-Poland Enterprise Management Development for A$1.838bn ($1.32bn).
The move continues the Australian lender’s exit from a decade-long overseas push, particularly into Asia. As part of a plan to complete $3bn worth of disposals, ANZ in October sold its retail and wealth management units in a number of Asian countries that it purchased from Royal Bank of Scotland in 2009.
ANZ said the sale price of the SRCB stake represents a price-to-book ratio of about 1.1 times the Chinese lender’s net assets as at December 2015, and will also boost ANZ’s common equity tier one ratio by 40 basis points to 10 per cent.