Australia

Macquarie has hired Ric Deverell as chief economist and head of macro research.

ANZ’s cash profit rose 5.3% to A$1.79bn ($1.4bn) for the third quarter ending June 30, as the Australian lender continues to reshape its institutional banking business.

Places for People priced its debut Australian dollar transaction on August 10. The $150m five year deal was also the first by a social housing provider in Australia.

Verizon Communications launched its first Australian dollar bond on Thursday. The four tranche deal is the largest corporate bond in the currency this year, raising A$2.2bn ($1.75bn) when it was priced on Friday.

Westpac this week followed Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in taking advantage of a glut of sterling covered bond liquidity. It issued a sizeable five year sterling covered bond which is expected to provide cheaper funding than the euro or dollar equivalent, boding well for additional supply.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has laid out the foundations for its licensing of new index benchmarks, with five already in line to be classified as “significant”.

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group on Monday became a clearing member of OTC Clearing Hong Kong (OTC Clear), the OTC derivatives clearing house of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX).

Order book momentum for the first Australian conditional pass through (CPT) issued by Bank of Queensland (BoQ) was quick to build when the deal was finally launched on Thursday, owing to the “eye-catching” initial spread.

After mandating leads on Monday, market participants expected Bank of Queensland’s (BoQ) debut covered bond would emerge on Tuesday. The deal’s absence from a quiet market led to speculation of a minor teething problem with leads confirming the deal is still being being worked on.

Leads Building Society extended its covered bond curve by four years on Monday with a €500m seven year covered bond that was priced with little new issue premium. The transaction is expected to be followed by Bank of Queensland’s first covered bond.

Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (BTMU) has hired Duncan Connellan as managing director of its Australian event finance team, part of the firm’s Asian investment banking division.

The Reserve Bank of Australia gave a rare endorsement by a foreign central bank of China's renminbi internationalisation strategy, acknowledging that RMB activity in the Sydney hub was picking up despite the RMBi agenda suffering a setback globally.