By Scott Murdoch
May 8 (Reuters) – Top Australian investment bank Macquarie Group reported an A$4.85 billion ($3.50 billion) full-year net profit on Friday, its second-largest ever, as the Middle East conflict helped propel activity in the bank’s lucrative oil and gas trading business.
The Sydney-headquartered diversified bank’s result beat a Visible Alpha consensus of A$4.39 billion and was up 30% from A$3.72 billion in the previous year.
Macquarie shares jumped to a record A$249.49, up 3%, before retreating to be down 1.62% later in the session. The selloff came as Australia’s benchmark S&P/ASX200 index was down 1.7%.
Macquarie’s Chair Glenn Stevens, a former Reserve Bank of Australia governor, said the U.S and Iran war was difficult for global policymakers to tackle as the length of the conflict was impossible to judge.
“The effects on the global economy, while there are some, are probably not too bad. If it’s a long duration event we will see effects on economic activity and inflation for the remainder of the year,” he said.
“It’s a very difficult shock for policymakers to deal with because it’s an adverse supply shock.
“Supply is constrained, prices rise and for macroeconomic policy that is a very difficult combination to deal with.”
The stronger-than-expected result helped keep Macquarie’s Chief Executive Shemara Wikramanayake as one of Australia’s most highly paid bosses. She earned A$26.5 million in the past year, but was eclipsed by Commodities and Global Markets (CGM) boss Simon Wright’s $A35.3 million paypacket.
Net profit from the CGM segment, Macquarie’s top profit-making division, jumped nearly 50% to A$4.22 billion ($3.04 billion) as the Iran war sent oil prices soaring above $100 a barrel and roiled global markets.
Its commodities business, which provides financing and lending to clients in commodity and financial markets, benefits from trading during bouts of market volatility.
“One of the things that we are cautious is about is that while volatility is welcome prolonged volatility does tend to lead to more subdued client appetite,” Wright said.
The result was also boosted by the disposal of its OnStream meters platform earlier this year. Macquarie had bought the platform as part of an acquisition of a UK smart meters business in 2025 for around 900 million pounds ($1.22 billion).
Macquarie’s results showed the bank’s private credit sector investment was up 5% to be worth A$27.3 billion compared to an almost 24% increase the previous year.
Wikramanayake said it had been a deliberate decision by Macquarie to adjust some of its private credit growth to avoid concentration risk. She said the bank’s private credit return sat at 4 to 4.5% in the past year.
“We have been telling them if they want more money they need to go out to third party capital and which they are doing, they have picked up some large separate managed accounts,” she told Reuters in an interview.
“We think they (private credit) is fantastic in terms of its return for risk.”
Macquarie said it would end its A$2 billion on-market share buyback programme, stating strong business growth and prevailing market conditions meant no further purchases were expected.
Macquarie declared a final dividend of A$4.20 per share for the year, up from A$3.90 in 2025. The total dividend was A$7 per share, up from A$6.50 last year.
($1 = 1.3883 Australian dollars)
($1 = 0.7380 pounds)
(Reporting by Scott Murdoch in Sydney; additional reporting Nikita Maria Jino and Sherin Sunny in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid, Jonathan Ananda, Subhranshu Sahu and Kim Coghill)
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