Macquarie Group is being touted as a party to watch as ANZ Banking Group prepares to forge ahead with the sale of its wealth business.
Sources said Macquarie's powerful principal investments team is working to form a bidding consortium ahead of the Goldman Sachs run-auction starting next year.
While sources cautioned it was early days, Macquarie is said to be canvassing interest in ANZ Wealth from industry superannuation funds including AustralianSuper. Alex Harvey, global head of the silver doughnut's principal transactions unit, would likely be rolling his sleeves up given the potential size of the transaction. The bank's advisory team is also keeping close tabs on the situation, sources said.
ANZ, which is navigating a string of high-profile divestments, is hoping to fetch about $4.5 billion from the wealth division sale.
If Macquarie invests with consortium members, it would serve as another example of the firm acting as a principal investor after using its own balance sheet in July to take equity in GenesisCare alongside China Resources.
But offshore headquartered parties including New York-listed MetLife, Japan's Meiji Yasuda, Hong Kong-based AIA Group and Tokyo-based Dai-ichi Life are also assessing how best to participate in the ANZ Wealth process.
Locally, long standing adviser UBS is on hand to help AMP, as foreshadowed by Street Talk. The wealth giant's level of interest is unclear, however, given its recent earnings woes and this week's executive restructure.
Chris Kelaher-led IOOF is said to be preparing to run hard for the wealth piece of ANZ's business and may also be seeking out bidding partnerships.
The biggest division in the ANZ Wealth business is life insurance, which has $1.6 billion of in-force premiums, representing a 13 per cent share of the individual market; the funds management division has $48 billion of assets under management.
Elsewhere in financial services, the Australian Financial Markets Association has named Credit Suisse's John Knox as its new chairman.
As reported by this column on Wednesday, Knox was appointed AFMA chair at an annual general meeting last week taking over from Morgan Stanley's Steve Harker in the role.
Knox took the helm as Credit Suisse's chief executive for Australia last year.
AFMA has, however, had a bumpy year after the corporate regulator commenced Federal Court action against three of the big four banks for alleged rigging of the bank bill swap rate.
The industry group advised the market in July that it intended to "step away" from its function as administrator of the BBSW benchmark and transfer responsibilities to an appropriately qualified entity.
