ANZ NZ CEO David Hisco recently told a news conference around 15 management roles would go and up to 30 back office roles would go in a restructure of one of Australasia's biggest banks. The aim is to reposition the bank to capitalize on the big growth opportunity of the moment, food production.
"We see a real opportunity in the agri sector in Asia and India. In India there are 20 million people a year moving from one to two meals a day and they want more protein. There's less arable land and more population coming on so New Zealand is in the prime position to benefit from that over the next 20 to 30 years," Hisco said.
ANZ acknowledged the move was also aimed at catering for many farms as they got bigger and more sophisticated as they transitioned from small family farms to larger corporates.
The tragedy in Japan caused grain and livestock futures to stumble this week amid the speculative selling that comes with market uncertainty. Not surprising given that Japan is the world's largest corn buyer and imports huge volumes of pork and other produce.
The long-term trend remains though and businesses like ANZ are very clear on this - the global food crisis is bankable.
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