ANZ's CEO would brook no suggestion of any "retreat from Asia", the theme of a question from more than one reporter on a media call with Shayne Elliott and the bank's institutional banking head Mark Whelan yesterday.With A$50 million of profit being sold to Singapore's DBS to relieve ANZ of some of its retail banking operations, the sale of five Asian franchises is "small beer," Elliott insisted.ANZ's rhetoric on Asia is now that it "remains core to institutional priorities" and will chew up investment spend to "grow our markets sales and cash management businesses."For the retail networks selected for sale, ANZ said, "it is clear the environment we face has changed" - a reference to the ardour of meeting compliance costs in a sub-scale business rather than economics.Also arduous may have been the work of building any franchise value. The customer numbers being sent over to DBS in 2017 will be fewer than those picked up from RBS when ANZ bought these businesses in 2009, at least in the case of Taiwan and Singapore. Indonesia's ANZ customer count is the same today as then.On the other hand the footings were magnified by more than double under ANZ's stewardship.The "partnerships" - a grab bag of four minority holdings in China, Malaysia and Indonesia with book values of $4.1 billion - remain for sale, as do the rats and mice retail operations ANZ could not sell to DBS.