The Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ASX: ANZ) share price had a great run over 2021.
It beat the broader market's performance by 8.1% last year, driven by a particularly good start.
At the end of 2020, the ANZ share price was trading for $22.70. Come the final session of 2021, it closed at $27.51, leaving it with a 21.1% gain for the 12-month period.
For context, the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) gained 13% in the same period.
Let's take a look at what drove the smallest big bank's share price last year.
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What drove the ANZ share price in 2021?
The ANZ share price gained 24% over the first 3 months of 2021. Although, the market didn't hear price-sensitive news from ANZ in 2021 until mid-February.
Then, the bank announced it clocked $1.8 billion of unaudited cash earnings for the first quarter of financial year 2021.
As The Motley Fool Australia reported at the time, that was a 54% jump on the average quarterly profit of the second half of financial year 2020.
The ANZ share price surged 2.8% higher the day it announced the news.
Its strong performance continued in May when it announced its results for the 6 months ended 31 March.
The period saw ANZ besting analyst expectations to report a $2.9 billion statutory after-tax profit and $2.9 billion of cash earnings from continuing operations. It also announced a 70 cent, fully franked, interim dividend.
Sadly, the market seemingly expected more, and the bank's stock tumbled 3.2% lower.
In June, ANZ announced its plan to undergo a $1 billion capital raise through issuing notes.
Finally, the last time the market heard price-sensitive news from the bank was in late October when it released its full-year results.
Once again, it had experienced a major profit surge. It reported a 72% jump in statutory profits, which came in at around $6.16 billion.
Its cash earnings increased by 65% to approximately $6.2 billion, and it announced a final fully franked dividend of 72 cents per share.
The ANZ share price gained 0.7% on the back of its annual results.
There was plenty of interesting non-price sensitive news from the bank in 2021.
It was hit with a $25 million penalty from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) in December.
Earlier in November, the watchdog also announced it was taking the bank to court over historical home loan applications.
It was also hit with a class action last month over certain credit card contracts.
Although some brokers are bearish on the company's performance for 2022, overall 2021 was an exciting year for the ANZ share price.
