Such is Macquarie’s focus on rewarding financial success that it elevated its former rainmaker – Shemara Wikramanayake – to chief executive seven years ago.
Unsurprisingly, there are plenty who find Macquarie’s supercharged style of corporate capitalism distasteful. They see that culture of success as one more aligned with greed – creating an army of Gordon Gekkos, the fictional character from Hollywood’s 1987 movie Wall Street who famously introduced the world to the boastful but cringeworthy phrase “greed is good”.
Unsurprisingly, there are plenty who find Macquarie’s supercharged style of corporate capitalism distasteful.
For a regulator, Macquarie makes a perfect target. The membership of its board reads like a Debrett’s guide to regulatory and corporate Australia – among them its chairman, Glenn Stevens, the former governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, and Wayne Byres, former chair of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.
After one of last year’s run-ins with the corporate regulator, Longo warned the group that its executives and board needed to reflect on what he described as a reckless disregard for compliance standards.
Joe Longo, the chairman of corporate regulator ASIC, is frustrated by Macquarie.Credit: Louise Kennerley
So here is a bit of a recap on regulatory speeding tickets issued to Macquarie and its business units over the past year.
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Last week, ASIC placed additional licence conditions on Macquarie Bank after what it called “more than 10 years of compliance failures”.
Last September, ASIC fined Macquarie Bank Limited a record $4.995 million for failing to prevent suspicious orders being placed on the electricity futures market.
In April 2024, the Federal Court ordered Macquarie Bank Limited to pay $10 million for failing to have effective controls to prevent and detect unauthorised fee transactions conducted by third parties, such as financial advisers.
Sure, most financial services operate under a plethora of regulations and laws globally and will fall foul of some over time.
Actor Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, the fictional character from the Hollywood movie Wall Street who made famous the phrase “greed is good”.
But for Macquarie, this many times and for more for almost a decade and a half?
ASIC’s action for this latest alleged breach could cost Macquarie north of $700 million – at least in theory.
Ultimately, the fine will likely be a small fraction of that. It will certainly be less than the reputation damage the mighty Macquarie will sustain.
That’s what happens when a company so frustrates a regulator whose chairman, a public servant, earns about $800,000 a year – a small fraction of the $24 million Macquarie’s Wikramanayake takes home.
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