Reddit therapy sessions: The big four bank where staff fear the axe

3 months ago 7

Opinion

September 2, 2025 — 3.14pm

ANZ staff are feeling like lobsters in a restaurant tank as diners file in for yum cha, with the bank’s new chief executive, Nuno Matos, set to unveil his sweeping new strategy in six weeks.

It’s a countdown to what is certain to involve many job cuts – some of which have already started – but the scope and size and target divisions remain a secret to the troops.

ANZ chief executive Nuno Matos has been hosting town hall meetings across the country and overseas to push his message of change.

Rumours that as few as 200 and as many as 5000 positions will disappear have been neither confirmed nor denied by the bank’s communications people, who are busy putting out brush fires in the lead-up to the big announcement.

The latest from Capital Brief quoted unnamed sources saying that up to 2000 jobs will be lost from ANZ’s projects division and another 3000 from technology, support, finance, government and strategy.

Drawing the threads together from disparate sources, Matos, whose coming strategy overhaul has been variously dubbed “El Nuno” or “Nunogeddon”, looks like he is prepared to be an organisational flamethrower rather than an incremental renovator.

Staff will need to strap in for what could be a wild ride given a 5000-person cull would represent more than 10 per cent of its workforce.

Matos has become the lightning rod for fear and blame among the staff, who have created a dedicated weekly Reddit thread dedicated to the personality and strategy of the unexpected outsider.

At an all-in staff town hall session held on Monday, executives fielded questions about redundancies and how these were being communicated, or rather miscommunicated.

It followed a story leaked to the media last week about an email sent to various ANZ senior staff about the procedure for handing in their laptops – when the trouble was that the memo was mistakenly sent before redundancy notifications had been made.

Matos has become the lightning rod for fear and blame among the staff, who have created a weekly Reddit thread dedicated to the personality and strategy of the unexpected outsider who took up his position as the bank’s chief executive in May.

ANZ is the smallest of the big four Australian banks.

The thread reads more like an ANZ staff community therapy session, populated by posts from workers concerned about whether they are in the firing line, mixed with tales of colleagues who have already been made redundant.

Having come from HSBC and missing out on taking the top job there, Matos was not apprised of the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of the Australian banking market. Nor was he familiar with the coffee stains on the hallways of Parliament House in Canberra, like most seasoned bank executives.

Appointing an outsider to lead an Australian bank comes with risks but also opportunities.

Looking through the miscommunications and abysmal staff morale, it seems Matos is on a mission to overhaul the underperforming bank – which is the smallest of Australia’s big four.

He replaced Shayne Elliott, who finished a 10-year stint as chief executive but left several issues to resolve – the most immediate of which was to address the bank’s risk culture.

In April, management consultants Oliver Wyman delivered a scathing assessment of ANZ’s risk culture, and found managers had turned a blind eye to cultural failings. The bank created a new role of “group head of non-financial risk program delivery” to brief Matos on progress – so repairing the bank’s reputation with regulators will be a key priority.

ANZ has been forced by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority to hold an additional $1 billion in capital and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission is yet to decide whether to pursue the bank in court over a bond trading scandal.

The issue is not a question of whether the bank is in sore need of change – it clearly needs an overhaul – and Matos has been clear that this is his goal.

In a staff note last month, Matos said the bank had to bring its productivity and costs “in line with industry standards and shareholders’ expectations”.

“I want ANZ to win. As a leader, I like to build, I like to transform, and I don’t want our bank to be average,” Matos told his people in a note to mark his first 100 days in the role.

But to cut anywhere near 5000 people would be a big swing. Corporate Australia is littered with stories of companies that cut too deep and damaged their franchises.

Unfortunately, thousands of staffers are wondering whether they will become lobster lunch.

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