Thirteen straight for Mac Bank

Macquarie Bank today announced it had chalked up a 67 per cent rise in annual profits, making this the thirteenth year in a row the investment bank and funds manager has bettered its previous year’s performance.

“As you can see last year’s result is more than three times the profit we achieved three years ago and more than twelve times the profit of twelve years ago,” beamed chairman David Clarke in front of shareholders at the bank’s annual general meeting in Sydney this morning.

Although the merger of two local property units to form the Macquarie Goodman Group contributed a “one off accounting gain” of $91 million, the bank’s overseas ventures, which include infrastructure investments and specialist funds in the United States, Eurpoe and Canada, were the chief contributor to the $823 million profit to March 31, 2005 said Clarke.

He told shareholders that international business revenue was now contributing 37 per cent to the bank’s overall revenue, with recent growth in international activities generating $1.3 billion.

Despite this stand-out global accomplishment, Clarke praised all of Macquarie’s business groups for their “record performance”. As is usual, investment banking contributed over 50 per cent of the bank’s revenue.

Wealth management operations benefited from favorable market conditions and a focus on cost management said Clarke.

Chief executive Allan Moss was particularly pleased with total Cash Management Trust funds exceeding $10 billion and total WRAP funds exceeding $14 billion.

Clarke also took the opportunity at this morning’s meeting to announce the bank’s plans to establish a securities broking business in India.