Top investment banker, Macquarie Group chief Nicholas Moore, dines out on pay, perks
MACQUARIE Group chief Nicholas Moore has chalked up more in pay and perks for the past year than the heads of ANZ, National Australia Bank and Westpac combined.
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MACQUARIE Group chief Nicholas Moore has chalked up more in pay and perks for the past year than the heads of ANZ, National Australia Bank and Westpac combined.
Company accounts reveal Mr Moore was awarded a remuneration package worth $18.2 million for the year to March.
It comes even after the investment banking titan paid back millions of dollars to customers swept up in its financial planning scandal.
Mr Moore’s bumper pay packet is more than the $17 million paid back to 224 Macquarie customers affected by failings in its private wealth management unit.
The sum also positions him to claim the mantle of best-paid executive among Australia’s listed companies after former Amcor chief Ken MacKenzie retired from the packaging group last year with a $22 million golden handshake.
The revelation drew fire from consumer advocates yesterday and could add fuel to Federal Labor’s campaign for a Royal Commission into the banks.
Mr Moore’s package — worth almost $350,000 a week — is 233 times the average full-time Australian wage of about $78,000.
It compares with a $16.5 million pay and perks package last year.
The details of his pay deal were laid bare yesterday as Macquarie posted a record full-year net profit of $2.06 billion, up 29 per cent.
The chief executives of the three major retail banks that reported results this week — ANZ, NAB and Westpac — scored a collective $15.9 million in remuneration.
Macquarie yesterday also revealed it had compensated the 224 customers found to have been affected by failings including poor book-keeping, client “misclassification” and questionable advice practices.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission this week said Macquarie’s “enforceable undertaking” to examine client files had been “satisfactorily completed”.
The combined remuneration pool for Macquarie’s 13 most senior executives clocked in at $116 million for the year to March — up $8.5 million on last year. By comparison, the nation’s biggest financial institution, the Commonwealth Bank, paid its executives a combined $43 million last year.
Mr Moore received a package worth $26 million in his first year at the helm of Macquaire, in 2008, when the group chalked up its then record profit of $1.8 billion. His remuneration sunk to just $290,756 in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis.
Consumer lawyer John Berrill, who has represented Macquarie clients who lost savings in its financial planning scandal, said the payout was paltry given there were 4232 cases assessed.
“The biggest loss I saw (when representing clients) was nearly $5 million — nearly as much as has been paid out in total,” he said.
Mr Berrill said he believed the Macquarie compensation scheme was falling “well short of the mark”, compared with others such as CBA following its financial planning scandal.
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