Why Australia’s best companies were built in the 1980s
Some mark the ’80s as the era of the corporate cowboys, but it also heralded the arrival of Australia’s most successful global finance house, major hi-tech success stories, and ‘ocker’ advertising.
The loudest noise in the 1980s came from the corporate cowboys – Alan Bond, John Elliott, Christopher Skase and Robert Holmes a Court. Longer term, however, history will record the 1985 arrival of Macquarie Bank – Australia’s global banker, investor, funds manager and infrastructure portfolio specialist – as more significant.
The banks thrashed around in the deep water of deregulation; Macquarie proved to be the deregulated deep water champion swimmer.
