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The Millionaires' Factory: The Inside Story of How Macquarie Bank Became a Global Giant
Do you know who pockets the money when you pay tolls on the Chicago Skyway? Who’s the major investor in Lagoon Water Solutions in Oklahoma City? Who sold Plano-based Atlantic Aviation for nearly $4.5 billion in 2021? Who closed a deal for financing a new Goethals Bridge between New York and New Jersey?
Would you have thought an Australian banking group was or is pulling the strings behind all these infrastructure projects?
The extraordinary and revealing story of the Australian bank that took on the world, and the culture that lies behind its entrepreneurial approach.
Macquarie is everywhere. As an investment bank, a commodities player and an international leader in infrastructure fund management, Macquarie has inserted itself into your life somehow, no matter where in the world you're reading this book.
The Millionaires' Factory lifts the lid on this unique banking success story, from its origins in Australia in 1969 to its presence in 33 markets today. It identifies the big decisions that have allowed the bank to thrive where others have floundered, and the unique Macquarie ability to spot a niche few others can see. It also uncovers the dramas, the turf fights, the scandals and the failures, as well as the supercharged salaries and bonuses that earned them the nickname 'the millionaires' factory'.
Drawing on their interviews with Macquarie CEOs and senior managers past and present, journalists Joyce Moullakis and Chris Wright explain the culture that drives its unique 'loose-tight' approach to risk, its empowerment of individual staff to try new things, and its knack for turning market calamities into opportunities. Markets move and Macquarie has reinvented itself time and again as they do so, but one thing never it's seldom on the wrong side of a deal.
Would you have thought an Australian banking group was or is pulling the strings behind all these infrastructure projects?
The extraordinary and revealing story of the Australian bank that took on the world, and the culture that lies behind its entrepreneurial approach.
Macquarie is everywhere. As an investment bank, a commodities player and an international leader in infrastructure fund management, Macquarie has inserted itself into your life somehow, no matter where in the world you're reading this book.
The Millionaires' Factory lifts the lid on this unique banking success story, from its origins in Australia in 1969 to its presence in 33 markets today. It identifies the big decisions that have allowed the bank to thrive where others have floundered, and the unique Macquarie ability to spot a niche few others can see. It also uncovers the dramas, the turf fights, the scandals and the failures, as well as the supercharged salaries and bonuses that earned them the nickname 'the millionaires' factory'.
Drawing on their interviews with Macquarie CEOs and senior managers past and present, journalists Joyce Moullakis and Chris Wright explain the culture that drives its unique 'loose-tight' approach to risk, its empowerment of individual staff to try new things, and its knack for turning market calamities into opportunities. Markets move and Macquarie has reinvented itself time and again as they do so, but one thing never it's seldom on the wrong side of a deal.
432 pages, Paperback
Published February 28, 2023
29 people are currently reading
290 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
October 4, 2025
4.3 stars: really enjoyed this book. Macquarie is a fascinating company and I love the entrepreneurial spirit of the organisation!!
August 23, 2025
Dense and fact-filled history of one of most diversified and lucrative trading firms in the world. Provided some interesting background, mini-biographies and similar information - but after several chapters the writing grew somewhat monotonous and very dry. Was a struggle to finish.
Excellent reference material and highly detailed accounts, but just not terribly engaging for me.
Excellent reference material and highly detailed accounts, but just not terribly engaging for me.
August 18, 2024
Risk management, entrepreneurial, supportive, incentivising remuneration structure.
Essential Macquarie message: if you are there with capital in the bad times, you’ll get generational opportunities.
‘The point is, an employee who experiences that level of support will act very differently to an employee who, in most global peers, learns (more implicitly than explicitly) that they really don’t matter’. - Ben Brazil
What value are you adding to the market? If you can’t work out what you’re bringing, I don’t think you’ve got a business. - Nick O’Kane.
Macquarie's risk management system has been known throughout its history as ‘loose-tight’, and later ‘freedom within boundaries’: if you have an idea, and if you can stand it up to the satisfaction of the bank’s leaders and risk professionals, then they will give you the keys and tell you to go do it. they won’t tell you how, that’s your job. You will be encouraged to fail along the way.
The whole point of Macquarie is the vast variety of engines, diverse in product and geography, which add up to a collective that seems to have an edge. It’s an innovator whose implosions are rare and contained. Being both visionary and inherently conservative is the trick that has got Macquarie to where it is today. And the architects of its best ideas get very rich along the way. You get rewarded for what you deliver.
Theory Y approach to recruitment and management. Draw upon goals and an employee’s interest in work, their independence, problem-solving, responsibility, and creative capacity.
Give employees as much latitude as possible, while remaining consistent with safety and controls. Encourage employees to take this down initiative and get on with it, rather than controlling them from the top. Entrepreneurial empowerment of the individual.
Started as the Australian branch of UK merchant banking group, Hill Samuel.
The culture had to change as the business grew. You wanted to keep the best parts: short lines of communication, bright people, highly competitive. But as it got bigger, you had to overlay that with systems and structure which wasn’t required in those early days.
In a manner that would later become characteristic of Macquarie, it took a subject (in this case, gold bullion) and hit every possible angle of it: buying, selling, supplying, delivering, storing, hedging, offering derivatives, servicing every end of the chain. It served the miner, the investor, everyone in between and then made another buck out of the volatility in the price.
Emerging philosophy from the gold bullion and Cash Management Trust businesses: be open to numerous ideas without ever betting the farm on any of them.
‘Basically we had this mantra if there was an idea, you could employ one or a few people on that idea, and it didn’t require much investment to pursue. If the new idea worked within six months, then you had a new business that could grow very large like the bullion business. If it didn’t work, you could close it down with very little cost. It was an option. If it worked, you had endless upside. If it didn’t, you would write it off to experience. The risks and rewards are asymmetrical. That became the whole ethos of the bank. If people had a good idea, they had the mechanism to start and explore the possibilities.
This would perplex outside directors, who’d assume there was capital allocation from the top. In fact, there wasn’t really much of a capital allocation process, because it was going on by stealth, out of the operating budgets down at the lower level.
Leadership would never be about the top telling people lower down what to do. It would be about listening to the people in the trenches and giving them the tools to make their ideas work.
Risk management is a key hallmark. Minimising risk and individual exposures. Culture set early by Tony Berg. He would need to understand every detail of a new product before approving it. Do bottom up assessments, not rely on third parties. Appropriate approvals and internal and external limits. Resulted in company still posting profits despite the range of severe market events it has navigated.
Macquarie’s theory of adjacencies: take the next logical step. Went from M&A and debt financing advice, to taking part in that financing, to being a developer, to creating funds for the assets it was developing and then operating those assets over the long term for investors. Always the next logical step. ‘It was just an example of responding to changes, with patient adjacent growth’.
“We had a long history of buying businesses when people had invested in the good times, then sold out in the bad times.” Being strong enough through the business cycle to seize opportunities when they presented themselves would be an enduring Macquarie trait.
After a successful deal, told to go and hire some people and build a real estate advisory business. “That would never have happened for me at BT. At Macquarie I was given the freedom and independence to explore and build something.”
It was the ‘find-a-niche’ evolutionary spirit of the bank.
Moss on remuneration: “the most critical aspect of Macquarie culture is that people very genuinely feel a sense of ownership of the businesses. There’s a real understanding that if they help to grow a business they will actually benefit from that business.”
Tony Berg said refining early rem policies comes down to a fundamental idea. a bank has a certain amount of capital invested in it by its shareholders, and they deserve a minimum rate of return for that. But returns above that are less to do with the capital those shareholders put in, and more to do with the people who have generated the profit. So they should get an increasing share of the surplus. That’s how the profit share scheme got developed.
On surviving the GFC: ‘banks are only at risk if they have a liquidity problem: an asset and liability mismatch, or a negative cash flow. Allco had a terrible mismatch. Babcock & Brown has a bad mismatch. Macquarie did not: Allan Moss understood risk’. Peter Yates.
‘The attitude was, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. It was pointless trying to solve every problem immediately because you just couldn’t do it. You had to get through day by day’ - Michael Carapiet.
‘In practice, almost all institutions get caught up with this boom-bust cycle. We have a long term history of buying businesses where people had bought in the good times and sold in the bad times. So the ability to just stay in the space and not go boom, bust, boom, bust is really powerful.’
Key Macquarie theme: don’t be emotional about a business that has run its course. When the market opportunity Brazil had exploited reached its natural end, they just shut the business down. ‘I think the commitment to change if the market or circumstances change has been one of the hallmarks of Macquarie’ - Robin Bishop.
I knew if we were doing the basics right, we would grow well and we would become big.
Don’t accept anything. Question everything. - David Clarke
Only six year-on-year declines in net profit in 53 years. Ana analysis of group income (internal) showed that at any given time, 40% of the business did not exist five years earlier.
Essential Macquarie message: if you are there with capital in the bad times, you’ll get generational opportunities.
‘The point is, an employee who experiences that level of support will act very differently to an employee who, in most global peers, learns (more implicitly than explicitly) that they really don’t matter’. - Ben Brazil
What value are you adding to the market? If you can’t work out what you’re bringing, I don’t think you’ve got a business. - Nick O’Kane.
Macquarie's risk management system has been known throughout its history as ‘loose-tight’, and later ‘freedom within boundaries’: if you have an idea, and if you can stand it up to the satisfaction of the bank’s leaders and risk professionals, then they will give you the keys and tell you to go do it. they won’t tell you how, that’s your job. You will be encouraged to fail along the way.
The whole point of Macquarie is the vast variety of engines, diverse in product and geography, which add up to a collective that seems to have an edge. It’s an innovator whose implosions are rare and contained. Being both visionary and inherently conservative is the trick that has got Macquarie to where it is today. And the architects of its best ideas get very rich along the way. You get rewarded for what you deliver.
Theory Y approach to recruitment and management. Draw upon goals and an employee’s interest in work, their independence, problem-solving, responsibility, and creative capacity.
Give employees as much latitude as possible, while remaining consistent with safety and controls. Encourage employees to take this down initiative and get on with it, rather than controlling them from the top. Entrepreneurial empowerment of the individual.
Started as the Australian branch of UK merchant banking group, Hill Samuel.
The culture had to change as the business grew. You wanted to keep the best parts: short lines of communication, bright people, highly competitive. But as it got bigger, you had to overlay that with systems and structure which wasn’t required in those early days.
In a manner that would later become characteristic of Macquarie, it took a subject (in this case, gold bullion) and hit every possible angle of it: buying, selling, supplying, delivering, storing, hedging, offering derivatives, servicing every end of the chain. It served the miner, the investor, everyone in between and then made another buck out of the volatility in the price.
Emerging philosophy from the gold bullion and Cash Management Trust businesses: be open to numerous ideas without ever betting the farm on any of them.
‘Basically we had this mantra if there was an idea, you could employ one or a few people on that idea, and it didn’t require much investment to pursue. If the new idea worked within six months, then you had a new business that could grow very large like the bullion business. If it didn’t work, you could close it down with very little cost. It was an option. If it worked, you had endless upside. If it didn’t, you would write it off to experience. The risks and rewards are asymmetrical. That became the whole ethos of the bank. If people had a good idea, they had the mechanism to start and explore the possibilities.
This would perplex outside directors, who’d assume there was capital allocation from the top. In fact, there wasn’t really much of a capital allocation process, because it was going on by stealth, out of the operating budgets down at the lower level.
Leadership would never be about the top telling people lower down what to do. It would be about listening to the people in the trenches and giving them the tools to make their ideas work.
Risk management is a key hallmark. Minimising risk and individual exposures. Culture set early by Tony Berg. He would need to understand every detail of a new product before approving it. Do bottom up assessments, not rely on third parties. Appropriate approvals and internal and external limits. Resulted in company still posting profits despite the range of severe market events it has navigated.
Macquarie’s theory of adjacencies: take the next logical step. Went from M&A and debt financing advice, to taking part in that financing, to being a developer, to creating funds for the assets it was developing and then operating those assets over the long term for investors. Always the next logical step. ‘It was just an example of responding to changes, with patient adjacent growth’.
“We had a long history of buying businesses when people had invested in the good times, then sold out in the bad times.” Being strong enough through the business cycle to seize opportunities when they presented themselves would be an enduring Macquarie trait.
After a successful deal, told to go and hire some people and build a real estate advisory business. “That would never have happened for me at BT. At Macquarie I was given the freedom and independence to explore and build something.”
It was the ‘find-a-niche’ evolutionary spirit of the bank.
Moss on remuneration: “the most critical aspect of Macquarie culture is that people very genuinely feel a sense of ownership of the businesses. There’s a real understanding that if they help to grow a business they will actually benefit from that business.”
Tony Berg said refining early rem policies comes down to a fundamental idea. a bank has a certain amount of capital invested in it by its shareholders, and they deserve a minimum rate of return for that. But returns above that are less to do with the capital those shareholders put in, and more to do with the people who have generated the profit. So they should get an increasing share of the surplus. That’s how the profit share scheme got developed.
On surviving the GFC: ‘banks are only at risk if they have a liquidity problem: an asset and liability mismatch, or a negative cash flow. Allco had a terrible mismatch. Babcock & Brown has a bad mismatch. Macquarie did not: Allan Moss understood risk’. Peter Yates.
‘The attitude was, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. It was pointless trying to solve every problem immediately because you just couldn’t do it. You had to get through day by day’ - Michael Carapiet.
‘In practice, almost all institutions get caught up with this boom-bust cycle. We have a long term history of buying businesses where people had bought in the good times and sold in the bad times. So the ability to just stay in the space and not go boom, bust, boom, bust is really powerful.’
Key Macquarie theme: don’t be emotional about a business that has run its course. When the market opportunity Brazil had exploited reached its natural end, they just shut the business down. ‘I think the commitment to change if the market or circumstances change has been one of the hallmarks of Macquarie’ - Robin Bishop.
I knew if we were doing the basics right, we would grow well and we would become big.
Don’t accept anything. Question everything. - David Clarke
Only six year-on-year declines in net profit in 53 years. Ana analysis of group income (internal) showed that at any given time, 40% of the business did not exist five years earlier.
August 6, 2025
A quick disclaimer, I returned this book to my library so I am going off memory and what quotes I wrote down meaning some details may be a little off.
Good account of the rise of Macquarie and how it found its niche in infrastructure and real assets but I would have liked to have learnt more about its Commodities and Global Markets Division. The book even said that it was one of the most profitable divisions in the bank but it is scarcely talked about.
My key takeaway is that the secret to success is pure persistence. Hill Samuel and later Macquarie was very much the underdog in the Australian financial industry when it first started out but they kept scouring for opportunities and they kept putting themselves out there and eventually they built a powerful portfolio with tentacles in every industry and are now a major, global player. A good example from the book is where it took Macquarie two attempts to own a stake in the highly profitable 407 toll road in Toronto and had to team up with a Canadian pension fund to attract investors as it was a new player in the Canadian investment industry.
The book also made clear that the bank's culture for innovation and entrepreneurship was another reason for its success. The book brings up many examples of the bank backing employees to establish various ventures abroad such as one employee going to Mexico to set up a renewable infrastructure fund or Macquarie's bid on the Grand Incheon Bridge in South Korea after negotiations with a British developer fell through. Macquarie's construction of toll roads in the United States - a country where toll roads are very unpopular - further shows the banks innovative spirit. A more trivial example of its culture for innovation was how it was the first Australian licensed bank to introduce night shifts on the trading floor for round the clock market access.
Overall, it was a good read and did a good job showing the rise of Macquarie investment bank.
Good account of the rise of Macquarie and how it found its niche in infrastructure and real assets but I would have liked to have learnt more about its Commodities and Global Markets Division. The book even said that it was one of the most profitable divisions in the bank but it is scarcely talked about.
My key takeaway is that the secret to success is pure persistence. Hill Samuel and later Macquarie was very much the underdog in the Australian financial industry when it first started out but they kept scouring for opportunities and they kept putting themselves out there and eventually they built a powerful portfolio with tentacles in every industry and are now a major, global player. A good example from the book is where it took Macquarie two attempts to own a stake in the highly profitable 407 toll road in Toronto and had to team up with a Canadian pension fund to attract investors as it was a new player in the Canadian investment industry.
The book also made clear that the bank's culture for innovation and entrepreneurship was another reason for its success. The book brings up many examples of the bank backing employees to establish various ventures abroad such as one employee going to Mexico to set up a renewable infrastructure fund or Macquarie's bid on the Grand Incheon Bridge in South Korea after negotiations with a British developer fell through. Macquarie's construction of toll roads in the United States - a country where toll roads are very unpopular - further shows the banks innovative spirit. A more trivial example of its culture for innovation was how it was the first Australian licensed bank to introduce night shifts on the trading floor for round the clock market access.
Overall, it was a good read and did a good job showing the rise of Macquarie investment bank.
September 14, 2023
I really wanted to like this book and was excited when I finally got my eyes onto it. But, alas, it was disappointing. Seems there was a lack of editing and structure, with "more on that later" occuring multiple times in various forms throughout the book with chronological zigzagging making the story less appealing to follow. But the biggest gripe was the story of Macquarie Bank read more accustomed of what one would read at an AGM in celebration of their Golden Anniversary. What it lacked in detail about deals, their structuring and outcomes was more than made up by the people involved and which department it belonged to. Only for the box of balanced reporting to be ticked was there mention by way of a few passing paragraphs toward the end about the disasters Macquarie had initiated that came to fruition long after they sold out (à la UKs Thames Water). Or why they failed to delve into Macquarie shutting down their London bank telling us "but that's a whole other story". What? Isn't the book supposed to be a platform to tell these stories?
The last chapter was certainly a sign of the times chronicling CEO Shemara Wikramanayake. She is by no stretch of the imagination a very intelligent and capable person. No doubt. But a whole chapter about her and justifying Macquarie's commitment to diversity? Oh please. They are Australia's premier investment bank. They love money. This is why they're good at what they do. This is merely an act of window dressing that epitomised the whole tone of the book.
Books by journalists are usually the ones to make any story fascinating, but not in this case. Maybe what they were aiming for is underpinned in Macquarie's ethos in investments that "the truism of the infrastructure business: that it's boring".
The last chapter was certainly a sign of the times chronicling CEO Shemara Wikramanayake. She is by no stretch of the imagination a very intelligent and capable person. No doubt. But a whole chapter about her and justifying Macquarie's commitment to diversity? Oh please. They are Australia's premier investment bank. They love money. This is why they're good at what they do. This is merely an act of window dressing that epitomised the whole tone of the book.
Books by journalists are usually the ones to make any story fascinating, but not in this case. Maybe what they were aiming for is underpinned in Macquarie's ethos in investments that "the truism of the infrastructure business: that it's boring".
May 26, 2024
Not a bad book. Indeed, at times it is quite exciting. I lean towards enjoying the story at the beginning as the personalities were more interesting and you could feel something in the air as the workers got this creation of theirs off the ground. The rationale for choosing the name Macquarie was sound, as was the one for actually obtaining a banking licence in the first place.
The book deserves credit for displaying some of Macquarie's sins, and indeed for demonstrating that it has a distinct culture that is both good and bad. I note acknowledgement that it is not, seemingly, a long-term culture, but rather a more aggressive, short-term one. The story of the firm's involvement in Asia, but then disengagement, and the contrast with the involvement in the United States, tells you something of this culture. I think this is a very Americanised Australian bank. It will be interesting to see how long Macquarie survives. It's been very good at keeping its riskier bits in the hands of funds and not within its core, but I'd still bet it is the prime candidate (out of the bigger Australian banks) to go bust.
The book loses some stars because it rejoices in its petty wokery at the end - some things on climate change, but also, hey look at us, our CEO is a brown woman. Shemara deserves great credit for ascending to the top in her world, and she seems to be a safe pair of hands at the helm of the ship. But she doesn't need diversity shrills undermining this rather impressive individual accomplishment by simplifying her to colour and sex. But this is the problem with much of the diversity industry and their fanatics.
Worth a read if you're in finance. Fascinating firm.
The book deserves credit for displaying some of Macquarie's sins, and indeed for demonstrating that it has a distinct culture that is both good and bad. I note acknowledgement that it is not, seemingly, a long-term culture, but rather a more aggressive, short-term one. The story of the firm's involvement in Asia, but then disengagement, and the contrast with the involvement in the United States, tells you something of this culture. I think this is a very Americanised Australian bank. It will be interesting to see how long Macquarie survives. It's been very good at keeping its riskier bits in the hands of funds and not within its core, but I'd still bet it is the prime candidate (out of the bigger Australian banks) to go bust.
The book loses some stars because it rejoices in its petty wokery at the end - some things on climate change, but also, hey look at us, our CEO is a brown woman. Shemara deserves great credit for ascending to the top in her world, and she seems to be a safe pair of hands at the helm of the ship. But she doesn't need diversity shrills undermining this rather impressive individual accomplishment by simplifying her to colour and sex. But this is the problem with much of the diversity industry and their fanatics.
Worth a read if you're in finance. Fascinating firm.
July 27, 2025
Had been meaning to read this since it came out in 2023 and glad I finally did. Special mention in the book to the project that actually killed me in 2023: “Macquarie… invested in UK rural superfast broadband business Voneus…”
The book did a good job of highlighting Mq’s entrepreneurial spirit and ability to find and navigate challenges in the external environment (“patient adjacent growth”) while keeping grip on risk every step of way. I resonated with that. Also interesting to delve into Mq’s history from the beginning (oft-repeated in the AGM’s I pretended to pay attention to LOL). And lastly, all the random shit Mq does - #1 transfer factoring (lending funds) for football clubs e.g. Leicester City, Crystal Palace, #2 a meteorologist on the trading floor screening shifting weather patterns (you can trade the weather, whatever that means)
The book did a good job of highlighting Mq’s entrepreneurial spirit and ability to find and navigate challenges in the external environment (“patient adjacent growth”) while keeping grip on risk every step of way. I resonated with that. Also interesting to delve into Mq’s history from the beginning (oft-repeated in the AGM’s I pretended to pay attention to LOL). And lastly, all the random shit Mq does - #1 transfer factoring (lending funds) for football clubs e.g. Leicester City, Crystal Palace, #2 a meteorologist on the trading floor screening shifting weather patterns (you can trade the weather, whatever that means)
January 1, 2024
Since 1999, stock price is up more than 10 times compared to Goldman's 4.8 times
May 29, 2024
Project finance Les go
December 19, 2025
some interesting insights on infra
May 15, 2023
Great insights into the “black box” of Macquarie for any shareholders. Focus on bottom up efforts of entrepreneurial executives to attack adjacent profit pools. Easy to read.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews