The flashy trader who became Australia’s highest paid banking executive

From a flashy trader in the 1990s, Nicholas O’Kane rose through the ranks at Australia’s ‘Millionaire Factory’ and leaves it after amassing $170m-plus in pay over six years.

Nick O'Kane, who owns a $40m Point Piper mansion, is leaving Macquarie Group this month.

A Sydney banker who pocketed $170m over six years and was once touted as the next chief executive of financial giant Macquarie has unexpectedly quit, after delivering billions of dollars in profit at the millionaire factory’s commodities trading unit.

On Tuesday, Macquarie said Nicholas O’Kane, whose $58m pay cheque last year made headlines for topping those of JPMorgan’s chief executive Jamie Dimon and Citigroup’s Jane Fraser, will leave for “a range of personal reasons”.

Mr O’Kane rose from relative obscurity to become part of Macquarie’s powerful executive committee in 2017. Since then his pay has featured in every annual ­report.

In the six years since the first disclosure, he has accumulated $170m in awarded pay and his earnings have exceeded that of chief executive Shemara Wikramanayake every single year.

The pay has reflected the parallel explosion in profits at the unit he has led since 2019, commodities and global markets (CGM), which almost quadrupled profits to $6bn last year. That was up from $1.6bn in 2018 to a grand total of $18.7bn over the period.

“I really want to thank Nick,” Ms Wikramanayake said at a briefing following the surprise announcement to the ASX earlier that morning.

“He’s made a massive contribution and impact. Part of that has been building an awesome team around the world, mostly through the commodities business, but also more recently across the whole of CGM.”

The unit rose from humble beginnings in the early 2000s, when Macquarie was only lending to energy and commodities businesses in the region. It came across a small commodities house called Cook Inlet and, on Mr O’Kane’s advice, bought the business. Now CGM is now the second-largest physical trader of natural gas in North America.

O’Kane’s Point Piper home. NSW Real Estate.

That is behind BP and ahead of established groups like Shell and ConocoPhillips.

Mr O’Kane’s unit is well known for the huge gas trading bonanza – and ensuing US lawsuit – it experienced during North America’s polar vortex in 2021, which helped drive the unit’s profits 50 per cent higher that year, and then again in 2022.

The market volatility and disruption after Russia’s invitation of Ukraine in 2022 helped Macquarie achieve major trading and commodity sale windfalls again in 2023. The unit contributed close to 60 per cent of Macquarie’s record $5.2bn profit that year.

With volatility moderating in the past few months from previous record highs, risk management revenues have fallen, particularly in the resources, gas and power sector, Macquarie said on Tuesday.

But after building a diversified client book of over 4000 relationships worldwide across 42 locations, partly under the leadership of Mr O’Kane, the CGM unit is still on track to make a very respectable $4bn in profit.

That will probably be the highest profit of Macquarie’s four businesses, which also include global investment banking and asset management operations, and a local banking unit.

“I think (Mr O’Kane) has said that it is the depth and capability of (the CGM) team and how they’re positioned … that gives him comfort to take this step, which he has told the team he’s doing for a range of personal reasons,” Ms Wikramanayake said.

Mr O’Kane was not present at Macquarie’s briefing on Tuesday. Macquarie said he had made the decision to leave, effective February 27, after 28 years at the company.

O’Kane was a currencies trader for National Australia Bank, before he relocated from Melbourne to Sydney with Macquarie in 1995.

After challenging but successful stints in Asia, including Malaysia and South Korea, Mr O’Kane was credited with opening Macquarie’s energy trading desk in Britain in 2003 and building it into a successful operation. That was before he moved to Los Angeles to lead Cook’s integration into what at the time was called Macquarie Cook.

In the depths of the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, he and former boss Andrew Downe played key roles in Macquarie’s acquisition of a struggling mini-Enron commodities trader called Constellation Energy.

The rest is now history.

As a successful trader in the US, Mr O’Kane would be seen driving fluorescent sport cars into work, and in 2021 reportedly bought Australia’s then most expensive house for $40m.

But given his tremendous commercial success, he was seen as a potential candidate to succeed Ms Wikramanayake when the time came for the 62 year-old CEO to retire.

Market sources said his trajectory would align almost perfectly with a top trading fund role. Some said that leading a big name, such as Archer Daniels Midland, would be a natural fit for him.

Archer Daniels Midland has been led by Chicago-based Juan Luciano since 2015. But the global agricultural commodities trader is under heavy scrutiny from the US Securities and Exchange Commission over its accounting practices, which last month led to the exit of its CFO.

Investment banking sources said Mr O’Kane was taking time out but would probably re-emerge with an executive role at a hedge fund or family office in Europe.

At Macquarie, Simon Wright, the head of its financial markets business within the CGM division, will replace Mr O’Kane as head of the unit. Mr Wright is also a Macquarie veteran who has been at the company since the late 1980s. He will join the executive committee from April 1.