Macquarie’s full-year results, announced today (May 6), brought yet another set of records: highest ever net profit, at A$4.7 billion ($3.3 billion), up 56% on financial 2021, which was itself a record; and 53 consecutive years of unbroken profitability since inception.
It is an outstanding group performance. But one of the more important numbers was that almost half – 48% – of net profit came from the Americas. All told, overseas income accounts for 75% of Macquarie’s total; Australia is now just a quarter.
All of these are records and it is easy to forget how recently the dynamic has shifted. It was only in the 2007 financial year that international income became the majority: until then the lion’s share was all Australia. And even then, Asia was the bulk of international earnings, not the Americas.
Today, though, so many of Macquarie’s engines are US-based that one begins to wonder about the group’s future. Three different cities house vital businesses.
Michael Silverton, chief executive of Macquarie Capital, effectively the investment banking arm (though nothing is ever quite that straightforward or mundane amid Macquarie’s federation of innumerable niche businesses), is based in New York, not Sydney.
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