Saul Eslake

Saul Eslake has been Chief Economist of the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) since August 1995. In that capacity he is also a member of ANZ’s Group Asset and Liability Committee, which oversees the management of ANZ’s balance sheet; and of the Corporate and Institutional Bank’s Sustainability Steering Committee, which is responsible for ANZ’s approach to environmental and social issues. Saul is also Chairman of ANZCover, the Bank’s internal crime, fraud and professional indemnity insurance subsidiary.

Prior to joining ANZ, Saul Eslake was Chief Economist (International) at National Mutual Funds Management (now part of the AXA Insurance Group) from 1991 to 1995; and Chief Economist of the stockbroking firm McIntosh Securities Ltd (now the Australian arm of Merrill Lynch) from 1986 to 1981. Earlier in his career, he worked as an economist for the Australian government, including two years at the Australian Treasury (Finance Ministry).

Saul Eslake has a first class honours degree in Economics from the University of Tasmania, and a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment from the Securities Institute of Australia. In 2003 he completed the Senior Executive Program at the Columbia Graduate School of Business in New York.

Saul is a Senior Fellow of the the Financial Services Institute of Australia, an Associate Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management, a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Australian representative on the International Conference of Commercial Bank Economists.

Saul Eslake has served a number of governments over the past 15 years. In 1992-93 he was Chief Executive of the Victorian Commission of Audit, which conducted a wide-ranging inquiry into the State of Victoria’s public finances for a then newly-elected State administration. He also served as a director of the Victorian Government-owned natural gas utility, Gascor, and a network of public hospitals in Melbourne’s north-eastern suburbs, in the mid-1990s. From 1998 until the end of 2005 he was a non-executive director of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.

He is currently a member of the Australian Government’s Foreign Affairs Council, Trade Policy Advisory Council, and Tourism Forecasting Committee; and of the Premier of Victoria’s Business Advisory Network. In his home State of Tasmania Saul is a director of the University of Tasmania Foundation, and Chairman of the Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board (which advises the State government on the distribution of financial assistance to artists, arts organizations and institutions).

He is also a member of the Advisory Panels for the Economics Schools of the University of Tasmania, Monash University and RMIT University.

eslakes@anz.com