Focus turns to Macquarie CEO role after Robin Bishop exit

Illustration: Rod Clement.

It was a humbling day for the supposed Millionaire Factory’s Master of the Universe.

Macquarie’s much-lauded investment banker and aspiring gardener Robin Bishop, 46, revealed he was off to “smell the roses”.

His fellow Ormond College alumni John Knox, chief executive of Credit Suisse Australia, said Bishop was “one of the finest investment bankers in the market”.

Client and Wesfarmers boss Richard Goyder said: “(Bishop) will be a loss to Macquarie.”

Tributes were written in the business press about the talents of a banker crowned the industry’s “most powerful deal-maker” only three months ago.

Meanwhile, over on the ASX, shares in Macquarie Group closed up 1.24 per cent at $86.30. Robin who?

You can bet the response wouldn’t have been as upbeat had it been Macquarie CEO Nicholas Moore announcing his retirement to focus on his Sydney Opera House fundraising duties.

Macquarie Group MD Nicholas Moore. Picture: Hollie Adams

Since 2008, when Moore began his impressive reign in the bank’s top job, the earnings in the Macquarie Capital investment banking arm Bishop is leaving have fallen from more than 90 per cent of Macquarie’s pre-tax earnings to just over 30 per cent in its last full-year results. That helps to explain yesterday’s shrug on the ASX.

So while investors barely blinked at Bishop’s departure, they are keenly waiting for news from chairman Peter Warne and his Macquarie board about who will replace Moore, who in May will have been in the top job for nine long years.

The head of Macquarie Asset Management Shemara Wikramanayake (who was paid $17.6 million in 2016 — only half a million less than Moore) was the internal favourite — even before she ramped up her PR campaign in the second half of this year.

Can’t be long till she — and the rest of us — find out if Warne has judged that branding exercise a success.

Let’s get together

So when his more than two decades at Macquarie come to an end before Christmas Eve, where next for the Toronto-born doctor’s son Robin Bishop?

No doubt fellow fortysomething Ben Gray, his good friend and another alumni of Melbourne University’s finance factory Ormond College, has a better idea than most.

Ben Gray at Ormond College.

In an extraordinary coincidence, Gray is also stepping down in the next fortnight from his lucrative gig running private equity giant TPG’s Asian operation out of Melbourne. As flagged here last week, fellow departing TPG colleague Simon Harle and Gray are expected to start their own private equity shop in October next year. Could Bishop somehow be associated?

For what it’s worth, team Bishop says not. Perhaps he’s just been inspired by his buddy’s career switch.

All will be revealed when his non-compete with Macquarie comes to an end sometime next year.

After their days together at Ormond College, the Gray-Bishop bromance has since migrated south of the Yarra.

Gray lives in the mammoth residential construction on South Yarra’s Avoca Street he embarked upon in 2012, first knocking down two properties before rebuilding anew.

Just along the way in the almost neighbouring southeast Melbourne suburb of Armadale, Bishop lives in a handsome Col Bandy-designed Victorian house he bought for $5.1m back in 2011 and on which he did a modest $300,000-plus internal renovation earlier in the year.

Bumbling Barnaby

Forgive the delay — but here’s a fun one from a Q&A wrap party held last month.

ABC MD Michelle Guthrie. Picture: David Geraghty

ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie was along to toast the night’s presenter Virginia Trioli,the crew and the show’s second last panel for the year.

One of night’s panellists was Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, who found himself in a social circle at the drinks event with Guthrie.

“And what do you do?” we’re told Joyce asked, perhaps thinking she was just another hanger-on after some free Ultimo booze.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce. Picture: Claudia Baxter

Guthrie explained that she worked at the ABC.

“And what do you do, there?” he asked.

Guthrie explained that she ran it.

Cue the deputy PM’s impersonation of an embarrassed beetroot.

“I should probably know that,” said Joyce.

Probably should.

After all, running Aunty’s $1 billion-plus budget is kind of a big gig. And Guthrie’s hardly been without purpose since she took over the national broadcaster in May, as the unhappy greybeards in Radio National could tell you.

Just to make it more awkward, we understand the pair have meet before, albeit briefly, in the corridors of Parliament House in Canberra.

In Joyce’s defence, it’s been a long year.

Down to business

The Business Council of Australia’s new president Grant King and shark-mad CEO Jennifer Westacott were spotted shuttling up the One Bligh Street lifts to the commonwealth’s offices in Sydney yesterday.

It’s one of King’s first official outings on BCA business since he was ordained last month.

The pair of micro-economic obsessives were dropping in for a round of meetings with ministers and their shadows before the paddleboarder King knocks off to enjoy the summer at his place in Sydney’s Palm Beach.

Run for cover

You have to hand it to Judith Crompton — her timing is impeccable.

Virgin Airlines Commercial Officer, Judith Crompton spoke at the Virgin Gala Luncheon.

The former Virgin Australia chief commercial officer left the airline in August following the appointment of new No 2 to John Borghetti, heir apparent John Thomas.

A month later she bobbed up at insurance group Cover-More in the newly created role of CEO, Travel and Aviation.

The common link between the two companies seems to be Cover-More director Sam Mostyn, who is also on the Virgin Australia board.

Yet less than three months later, Crompton is now in line for another handy payout after the Cover-More board yesterday backed a $741m takeover offer from global giant Zurich Insurance.

The CEO contract of Cover-More CEO, former QBE group executive Mike Emmett, has a provision in his employment agreement for termination as a result of fundamental change, “including a material diminution in the role or delisting of Cover-More from the ASX’’. It’s a fair bet Crompton will have the same.

Even if she doesn’t have the same form of words, Crompton can probably rest easy, given Mostyn also happens to be the head of Cover-More’s remuneration committee.