History On Side Of Yarra Banks

The Age

Thursday April 6, 2006

MARC MONCRIEF

Sydney was on the cards for nab, but the madness passed and it's still here, writes Marc Moncrief.

IN MANY ways, the story of Melbourne is a tale of two banks. They have battled through consolidation. They have grown together, as feuding neighbours, for more than a century. They have matured from their colonial history and today, like Melbourne, they boast a global presence.

Across Melbourne's skyline, the towers of nab and ANZ stand tall, but so do those dedicated to Commonwealth Bank and Westpac - Sydneysider competitors that round out the country's Big Four banks.

The immediate conclusion is that in the modern finance industry, the physical position of a company's headquarters carries little importance. Today, an office needs a phone line and little besides. But among those with parochial concerns, financial nous and a penchant for history, it remains vital that, for National Australia Bank and ANZ, the phones lead to 03. The mail is delivered to VIC, 3000.

For those with only the financial nous, the banks' headquarters identify the city as a centre of commerce, of influence, and of power.

For ANZ chief executive John McFarlane, the question is not "why stay in Melbourne?" but rather, "why leave?" He told The Age that tax benefits had, at one point, made him think of moving house to New Zealand, but the undisputed position of Sydney as the nation's financial capital never tempted him and the move, in the end, just didn't make sense.

"It's generally historical," Mr McFarlane said of the bank's Melbourne home. "The major banks were either British or state-owned, so you have one set up in NSW, one in Victoria."

The nation's biggest bank, nab, in the nadir of its $360 million foreign exchange scandal that cost it its chief executive, its chairman and a few notable board members, also considered a move - to Sydney. But the madness lasted only a moment.

Tha bank has plastered itself to many things Melbourne. Its relationship with AFL extends from the sponsorship of kids club Auskick to the pre-season championship nab Cup.

The bank's head of Australian operations, Ahmed Fahour, said the decision to place the award-winning building for its Australian headquarters in Docklands - within walking distance of the bank's global headquarters on Bourke Street - pioneered the revitalisation of a beleaguered waterfront.

He remembers leaving for New York and a position with Citibank in Docklands' darker days.

"When that decision was made to build the (nab) Australian headquarters in Docklands, the area was nothing," Mr Fahour said. "It was a shipping port area. There was swampland. It was a lot of warehouses and there was nothing there.

"I come back to Australia in 2004 and I look at Docklands and I look at this building and everything that got built around it and I went 'Holey moley, this is really serious'.

"For the nab, which was the first big corporate in this country and in this city to locate its headquarters in Docklands, it was a pioneering decision."

Mr Fahour said the bank's relationship with Victoria extended beyond the historical. He said one in five nab retail customers came from Victoria. One in four small-business customers came from Victoria. One in three agribusiness customers came from Victoria. And nab's MLC runs Victoria's top life insurer.

"When we stand back and think about the size and role that the Victorian and Melbourne economy play to the health and wellbeing of the National Australia Bank, it's quite sizeable," Mr Fahour said.

In 1835, John Batman first explored Port Phillip Bay. That same year the Bank of Australasia was established under royal charter. Today we call it ANZ, the nation's third-largest bank by market capitalisation and by lending.

ANZ often wins plaudits from the rest of the Big Four bank fraternity, who say that over the past few years ANZ has developed into the most innovative in the brotherhood. Personal Investor magazine has awarded ANZ its Home Lender of the Year award for five out of the past six years.

John Fawkner followed Batman to found marvellous Melbourne and in the 1850s, gold lust infected the settlement. Museum Victoria spruiks that British emigrants bought more tickets to Melbourne in 1852 than to any other destination in the world.

By 1858, fired by gold and a bustling new city, the National Bank of Australasia was born. Today, it is the National Australia Bank - the largest in the country by any measure.

When the Yarra ran with gold rather than umber, Melbourne strutted the world stage a debutante.

Slowly, Sydney sapped Melbourne's glory. For Victoria's financial services minister Andre Haermeyer, the run ended in 1980, when the Australian Stock Exchange made city exchanges obsolete and the traders shifted north.

LINK

http://www.artsmonash.edu.au/

ncas/multimedia/gazetter/list/melbournecity.html

© 2006 The Age

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