Running the company widely seen as Australia’s greatest global success story, Macquarie Group, is as drenched in status as it is in remuneration. But it comes with incredible challenges – not the least of which is comparisons with the performance of your predecessors.
Greg Ward will be the fourth modern-era chief executive for Macquarie since the investment bank listed on the sharemarket 30 years ago when he takes the helm after Shemara Wikramanayake’s departure in November. Before her tenure, Allan Moss ran the company when it went public, succeeded by Nicholas Moore in 2008.
Where Ward’s ultimate pay packet will land depends entirely on the future success of the company. Macquarie is renowned for its performance-driven, eat-what-you-kill culture.
They don’t call it the millionaires’ factory for nothing!
It is a formidable line-up of executives that Ward needs to stack up against in terms of financial performance.
Moss, who produced total shareholder returns over 12 years of more than 1300 per cent, is surely impossible to beat. Formidable as he was leading and growing Macquarie, it was a smaller outfit in the 1990s and early 2000s, so he had the numerical advantage of increasing profit and share price off a smaller base.
Wikramanayake’s imminent retirement was one of the industry’s worst-kept secrets. Ward’s success at the helm of [Macquarie’s] banking unit made him a shoo-in to replace her.
Moore’s performance statistics are almost as staggering. From his start in the hot seat in 2008 to his departure ten years later, he delivered a total shareholder return of 265 per cent – an outcome made all the more spectacular given his leadership straddled the global financial crisis and its aftermath.
Moore’s success stacks up well compared with the performance of the banking and financial services index, which was up 118 per cent, and the S&P/ASX200, which gained 65 per cent during his tenure.
Wikramanayake had her fair share of challenges in her eight years at the top, including the COVID disruptions leading into a turbocharged inflationary environment. She has also managed through the global instability that came with Donald Trump’s presidency – including the imposition and then partial reversal of his Liberation Day tariffs, and the Iran war.
She presided over a period in which Macquarie’s total shareholder return, including dividends, has been 192 per cent, compared with a more modest 143 per cent gain by the banking and financial services index and the ASX200’s 106 per cent gain.
For banking analyst veteran Brian Johnson, who describes Moore as an incredible chief executive and has worked with all three Macquarie CEOs during his years as the company’s long-time banking analyst, Ward is the perfect choice to take the reins.
Johnson credits Ward with having well-honed financial skills, which were sharpened during his years as Macquarie’s chief financial officer. He also has that essential Macquarie ingredient of demonstrated executive experience, like both Moore and Wikramanayake.
Moore had run several divisions of the banking group by the time he was elevated to the top job, the most recent having been running and exponentially growing Macquarie Capital, which is broadly its investment bank division.
Before Moore’s elevation, his pay peaked at almost $33 million in the year before the global financial crisis. At Macquarie, which is the ultimate meritocracy, pay levels closely reflect financial success.
Wikramanayake’s leadership of the asset management division made her a standout star in the years leading up to her appointment, and earned her almost $17 million in the year before she took the helm. Her appointment was significant for having smashed the male-dominated banking glass ceiling, but inside the industry, her performance had made her the odds-on favourite.
Ward has been leading Macquarie’s banking and financial services division during what Johnson, the analyst, describes as the group’s “attack-and-kill phase” of growth.
Under his management, Macquarie has gone from a sleepy small lender to an aggressive challenger which has been gaining market share at a velocity that is disrupting the big four banks.
Until Thursday, Wikramanayake’s imminent retirement was one of the industry’s worst-kept secrets.
Ward’s success at the helm of its banking unit had made him a shoo-in to replace her.
The timing works well for him, as he will feel the tailwind of Macquarie’s share price comeback this year after a few rockier years.
But while the millionaires’ factory remains an innovative company, it is so large and mature now that Ward faces a tough challenge repeating the big gains of Moore, Moss and Wikramanayake.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
