ANZ's institutional banking business has been transformed from one "that consumes capital to one that generates capital," the bank's chief executive Shayne Elliott declared yesterday.Even so, returns from institutional banking, a business centred on what remains of ANZ's Asian and international connections, took a turn for the worse over the last year with provisions up almost three-fold to A$741 million from $198 million.Profit before provisions - in the entity that wraps up almost all of ANZ's evolving "Asian" aspirations - fell 24 per cent to $2.2 billion. The cash profit fell 46 per cent to $1.1 billion, a result exacerbated by a "derivative credit valuation adjustment" of $168 million.Leaving this item aside, Mark Whelan, ANZ's head of institutional, presented the cash profit for the division as a decrease of 34 per cent.The clear-out of low margin business saw gross loans under institutional banking fall to $97 billion at September 2016, down 18 per cent or $21 billion from six months before and down $16 billion from 12 months before.Trade finance is one business line in reverse, with loans in this segment almost halving to $413 billion at September 2016 from six months and 12 months before.Margins on both international banking and institutional banking climbed over the last year, up 40 basis points to 1.79 per cent in international and up 14 bps to 2.20 per cent in institutional.Elliott, told an investor briefing yesterday that ANZ had "more levers to pull than our peers", a reference to the menu of asset disposals ahead of ANZ including the four, near stranded, Asian "partnerships" (all minority holdings) along with the domestic wealth and life insurance business.Elliott insisted the bank was engaged in meaningful discussions on the much rumoured sales of stakes in AMMB Holdings Berhad (Ambank)in Malaysia and PT Bank Pan Indonesia (Panin) along with Bank of Tianjin and Shanghai Regional, all with a book value in excess of $4 billion.