Macquarie cracks record result
Market volatility has not acted as a brake on Macquarie Group, which today announced a record full year net profit of $1.8 billion — up 23 per cent.
The company told the Australian Securities Exchange that the record result had been built on the back of a record specialist fund raising of over $22 billion, an 18 per cent increase in assets under management and a return on equity of 23.7 per cent.
Commenting on the result, Macquarie Group managing director and chief executive officer Allan Moss said operating income had increased by 15 per cent to $8.2 billion and earnings per share had increased 13 per cent to $6.71.
The result has prompted the board to declare a second half dividend of $2 per share, fully franked.
Macquarie Group chief financial officer Greg Ward said the key drivers for the result included a strong performance from equities-related businesses in Asia, Australia and Europe, especially during the first half, substantial investment banking flows of transactions valued at approximately $200 billion along with record volumes in foreign exchange and commodity related businesses.
Drilling down on the Macquarie results, the Financial Services Group increased its contribution by 33 per cent, which was attributed to strong retail broking income, while the Funds Management Group was reported to be “very substantially up” on the previous year due to the one-off contribution from the sale of the Macquarie-IMM Investment Management joint venture in Korea and good performance fees from equities funds.
Discussing the group’s outlook, the incoming managing director and chief executive, Nicholas Moore, said market conditions made short-term forecasting more difficult than usual and the current state of the market suggested it would be challenging to repeat the record performance.
AUTHOR
Mike Taylor
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