Shayne Elliott is very angry
In suing ANZ, Elliott's real target is chairman Paul O'Sullivan.
From Rio Tinto’s Jean-Sébastien Jacques to Magellan’s Hamish Douglass to the inimitable Alan Joyce, I’ve got a decent record – I humbly submit – of picking the self-blind egomaniacs hiding in plain sight at the top of corporate Australia. And I picked Shayne Elliott like a dirty nose (here, here, here, here and here).
The former chief executive is now suing ANZ Banking Group for his 2024 and 2025 bonuses (worth $13.5 million), cancelled last month by the board over “non-financial risk shortcomings at the bank” that resulted in a record $240 million settlement with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
This is classic Australian board behaviour. It had been apparent to the market for years that ANZ was underperforming, that its tech wasn’t working, and that it exuded a piss-poor attitude about its own culture. The ANZ board wouldn’t hear of it! Throughout the final four years of Shayne’s shitful epoch, the directors backed him and backed him until, faced with their own consequences (i.e. being voted off the board by shareholders), they decided suddenly that Shayne’s gotta go and if it’s expedient, so does his plunder.
