Biography|Donald Neil Sanders — The Commonwealth Bank's First Share Price Printed on His Watch

On 12 September 1991 the Commonwealth Bank listed.

The issue price was $5.40. The shares closed the first day at $6.46.

The float raised about $1.3 billion and was then the largest in Australian history.

Sanders was the Bank's first chief executive officer. The title had been created in January 1991, while he was still managing director of the old statutory corporation.

Privatisation had been tied to the State Bank of Victoria purchase. Canberra needed capital in the Bank before it could absorb the Victorian books.

The first tranche left the Commonwealth as majority owner. Later sales in 1993 and 1996 finished the job.

He retired in June 1992, on or about his sixty-fifth birthday, and handed the chair to David Murray.

The listing was run from the Martin Place headquarters at number 48, the former Government Savings Bank of New South Wales that the Commonwealth had restored and reoccupied in 1990.

He lived until 25 November 2020. The Reserve Bank recorded the date in its 2021 annual report. The Sydney Morning Herald death notice used the same day. Wikipedia later printed 15 November, which does not match those records.

Photo: J. Bar, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons