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Labor is on the cusp of closing a major deal with ANZ to ensure the banking giant does not follow some of its rivals and withdraw services from the Pacific, creating an opportunity for China to potentially fill the vacuum.

Meanwhile, Resolute Mining says its top priority is the safety of CEO Terry Holohan and two other staff members being held in west Africa’s Mali but investors have been spooked, wiping off a third of the company’s market value.

And the federal government has taken another crack at super funds and urged them to do more to improve their customer service record, days after mega-fund Australian Retirement Trust suffered an outage which delayed pension payments to members for days.