Good evening,

ANZ boss Shayne Elliott has a cure for the bank’s impassive loan book: a deal with Antony Catalano and Alex Waislitz.

Street Talk can reveal ANZ is in talks to buy a stake in View Media Group, a real estate media business set up by the duo last year, where Seven West is also on the register.

View Media owns realestateview.com.au, which is not too different from property-watching mainstays Domain and REA. ANZ suits would be hoping all those eyeballs snooping on houses would roll over to its mortgage offerings and help boost its $700 billion-odd total loan book.

ANZ is negotiating for the View Media stake as it waits on ACCC and Treasury approvals for its $4.9 billion acquisition of Suncorp’s banking business (incidentally, also first revealed by this column).

This one should be much smaller, but shows ANZ still has an eye out for M&A.

We also spotted smoke from Origin Energy’s $18.4 billion bid from Brookfield and EIG, the biggest deal on the boil right now across public and unlisted markets.

The bidders have definitely gone back to Origin to discuss a recut in the past week, citing the gas price cap as a solid reason to lower their $9 a share bid. So far, Origin seems to have refused to budge – but it would be interesting to see if it cops up to the talks on the ASX tomorrow.

We also got our hands on Sun Cable’s flyer, for those interested in a low-down of the company that has two billionaires brawling in public.

Lastly, there was a bit happening in people moves. UBS ECM co-head Alex Dignam was off to a family office, Goldman Sachs shed equities co-head Ben Clifford, and Aware Super picked its man for its overseas push.

Happy reading,

Anthony Macdonald, Sarah Thompson and Kanika Sood
Street Talk editors