ANZ has announced it has dismissed an employee who was stood down as a “precautionary measure” in November 2014 when the bank began an internal review of what it calls “the BBSW matter”.
ASIC has been investigating possible manipulation of the BBSW by the big Australian banks in the wake of record fines for global banks like Deutsche for similar breaches.
ANZ is “continuing to cooperate with the ASIC investigation”, said a statement released this afternoon.
ASIC chairman Greg Medcraft warned the big banks against deliberately frustrating ASIC’s requests for information on the BBSW matter in June.
The ANZ statement said: “To date, this has involved a significant number of people working on the identification, analysis and provision of many hundreds of thousands of documents and records to ASIC and the consideration of complex issues.”
“ANZ’s internal review, announced in November 2014, is also progressing. Initially this was focused on the analysis and provision of information to ASIC. More recently, ANZ has extended its review to examine compliance by employees with ANZ’s Code of Conduct including its Use of Systems, Equipment and Information Policy.
“As a result of its Code of Conduct review, ANZ today dismissed one employee who was stood down as a precautionary measure in November 2014.
“This disciplinary action relates to inappropriate electronic communication and is not related to markets trading practices. Investigations related to other staff have either been completed or are ongoing,” said the statement.
The statement said that while “at this stage” it is not appropriate for the bank to comment, it will keep the market up to date as “important developments occur”.
