ANZ CEO says high taxes prevent Australia from being top Asian financial hub
Nuno Matos adds that capital is not attracted to high-tax environments
[SYDNEY] Nuno Matos, the CEO of ANZ Group, said on Tuesday (Sep 15) that Australia has some of the ingredients needed to become a regional financial hub, but is being held back by its unfavourable tax regime.
Matos noted that Australia has developing capital markets and a big pool of domestic savings through its compulsory pension system, two conditions that are important for becoming a financial centre.
But it lacks a tax regime attractive to foreign capital, unlike other financial centres in the Asia-Pacific region, he added.
“You also need to have very favourable taxation (to be a financial hub). And in that case, Australia does not have it,” the Portuguese-born former HSBC executive told a conference in Sydney.
He also said that capital is not attracted to high-tax environments. “Hong Kong and Singapore, they are basically zero per cent tax on capital.”
Australia should not “expect to be a financial hub if you don’t attract capital, financial capital”, he pointed out, adding that “capital taxation needs to be different”.
In June, Australia’s parliament passed legislation scrapping the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount on assets held for more than a year from Jul 1, 2027, returning to the pre-1999 policy of taxing inflation-indexed gains, with a 30 per cent minimum tax on net capital gains.
Australia’s parliament also passed legislation last week broadening the types of assets on which foreign residents are subject to capital gains tax.
Asked about the impact of artificial intelligence on businesses, Matos replied that it is changing jobs and warned that workers who fail to adopt it will be left behind. “If you are not an AI adopter, you will lose your job to someone that is an AI adopter.”
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He did not rule out the possibility that AI could cause large-scale job losses at the bank, saying “nobody knows” what would happen.
AI’s development and adoption also need to be accompanied by guard rails and limitations, Matos added. “AI, at this point in time, is creating risks at a much higher pace than what their own builders and developers were thinking about it,” he explained.
The remarks come after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged AI companies to slow the rate at which they develop the technology. The call was supported by Elon Musk, who runs xAI, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. REUTERS
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