AUSTRALIA and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd, Australia's third-largest bank, completed a US$263 million purchase of a 19.9 percent stake in the Shanghai Rural Commercial Bank, it said in a statement yesterday.
Bob Edgar, senior managing director at the Melbourne-based bank, and Alex Thursby, its group managing director for the Asia-Pacific, will join Shanghai Rural's board of directors, the statement said. ANZ has operated in China for 21 years and was the first Australian lender to open an office in the country in 1986, Bloomberg News reported.