Shemara Wikramanayake, another of Macquarie’s quiet achivers
Shemara Wikramanayake says she’s “not very interesting”. So why does everyone want to hear from the Macquarie CEO?
The dimly lit Maritime Ballroom at the Hyatt Regency in Sydney was draped in royal blue and filled with happy Macquarie Group shareholders. It was July 26 last year, the annual general meeting of the highly successful bank and asset manager, and like most years the audience listened as the board and CEO Nicholas Moore reported on another good performance. But this year there was a slight frisson in the air – Moore was going and the shareholders were keen to hear from his successor.
Shemara Wikramanayake was on a career high, but she was not on the stage with non-executive directors including former Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens and veteran company director Gordon Cairns. With five months to go before she would take the reins, protocol required her to take, if not exactly a back seat, one that was down in the audience.
But the shareholders were not to be denied and after several requests for “Shemara” from the floor, chairman Peter Warne relented and the 57-year-old Macquarie veteran took the microphone. “I’m really excited and challenged about learning about the other businesses that I actually haven’t been involved in,” she quipped in an ironic reference to the 31 years she had spent working across the bank in nine countries. “I’m a bit nervous about it but I look forward to being up on that stage in Nicholas’s seat next year.” She described Moore as a friend, colleague, mentor and boss. He was leaving an “amazing legacy”, she said. She might have added that Moore had also left her a playbook on how a Macquarie CEO should operate.
Wikramanayake’s natural hesitation about taking centre stage, like her belief that she is “not very interesting”, has surely been intensified by Moore’s preference for minimal media engagement. In his time at the top, he gave only a handful of long-form interviews and was famous for staying silent while other CEOs spent their energy building their public profiles.
His successor’s reticence comes despite global recognition of her achievements and her high-profile appointment to a powerful new United Nations finance group on climate change. Last year, Wikramanayake took fifth spot on the international version of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list. It was an accolade that didn’t get a broad airing in the local media, perhaps because Wikramanayake herself did not push it.
The quietly spoken financier was noticed early at Macquarie. Those who know her well identified “Shem”, as she is called in close circles, as a rising star. “She established herself very early from her time in Auckland to her time in MacCap (Macquarie Capital),” says John Roberts, a Sydney Airport director and former head of Macquarie’s funds business. “Obviously she’s very bright, she clearly has a brain that picks up things quickly and processes things quickly.”
Roberts says it was Wikramanayake’s work in a prudential role within Macquarie Capital, the advisory arm, that made her stand out. She was charged with assessing hundreds of investment ideas and helping to decide which of those the group would back. After that she was parachuted into the US to help build the bank’s investment funds division. “Stepping up in North America we really wanted to have someone who would represent Macquarie, represent the funds and have the ability to interact at a high level,” says Roberts, who remains chairman of Macquarie’s infrastructure and real assets arm.
Monash University chancellor and former Macquarie stalwart Simon McKeon says of Wikramanayake: “She made me look like an absolute hero in the few years she was in Melbourne. She made me look very good on a number of deals. She’s a very good operator and a decent person.” Others describe her as very inclusive and a perfectionist, qualities often found in leaders. She is a self-described maths geek, a trait that worked well for her at Macquarie as it became a global player in investment banking and built an infrastructure and asset management division.
Her rise to the top at Macquarie makes her just the second woman to lead a large listed Australian financial institution after Gail Kelly, who steered Westpac for seven years until early 2015, after five years at the helm of St George Bank. If you include Bendigo Adelaide Bank chief Marnie Baker in this list, you get to three. But it is Wikramanayake, a woman with Sri Lankan heritage, who has become the banking and financial service sector’s most visible symbol of diversity.
She was born in England and did her early schooling in London before coming to Australia, where she attended the prestigious Ascham private girls school in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Armed with commerce and law degrees from the University of NSW, she worked as a corporate lawyer at Blake Dawson Waldron.
She joined Macquarie in 1987 and has lived and breathed its entrepreneurial culture in roles spanning nine countries and multiple business units. For some years, as head of Macquarie Asset Management, she was touted as Moore’s successor.
Her commitment to Macquarie is strong. Like Moore, Wikramanayake has not sold a single one of her Macquarie shares during her time there. And despite earning a 2018 pay packet of $18.9 million, she doesn’t own a house.
Her appointment has attracted great interest – and not just from shareholders – but the company’s culture encourages executives and board members to adopt low profiles. Indeed, Macquarie’s successes, including its sprawling global operations – it now generates about 60 per cent of its income outside Australia and manages $532.1 billion – have seen the group’s leadership pull back from media engagement more than at any point in its 50-year history. This is in contrast to many other top ASX companies and the chiefs of the big four banks. ANZ’s Shayne Elliott and Westpac’s Brian Hartzer, for example, participate more actively in political and regulatory debate, as do their respective chairmen.
Macquarie’s more closed approach to the media can be traced back to two factors. The bank had a relatively open relationship with the media in its formative years. Former chief Allan Moss, who led Macquarie for 15 years until 2008, and its late chairman David Clarke, an engaging conversationalist and bon vivant, were receptive to journalists. So too were many of the key executives during that era.
This changed, however, as the perception inside Macquarie grew that the media was obsessed with negative stories about the firm which made so much money for its shareholders. In 2002, when Macquarie was colloquially known as “the millionaires’ factory”, Moore, as boss of investment banking, was publicly chastised by Sydney-based radio broadcaster Alan Jones. The criticism concerned potential fee gouging at Sydney Airport after a Macquarie-led consortium agreed to acquire the facility for $5.6 billion, and Moore was not impressed.
“Allan Moss I think understood the role that the press played in society,” says a former Macquarie insider. “There was a lot more of regular interaction. I take it back to those times when Nicholas started copping flak. That burnt him a lot and he took the view to pull the shutters up. After that year it took a lot of convincing (for him) to do anything in the press.”
A former Macquarie executive says Macquarie had a “very open relationship” with the media in the 1980s and even most of the 1990s. The negative coverage in the press fractured the relationship, but that coincided with the other factor – a much bigger push into markets offshore. “Talking to the media at a practical level in a big global company is difficult to balance with time,” says the former executive. “Where do you draw the line?”
The number of detailed interviews Wikramanayake has given throughout her career can be counted on one hand. McKeon suggests Macquarie’s somewhat closed-shop approach may slowly start to change under her stewardship – although she declined to be interviewed by The Deal for this piece. “She honestly thought she wasn’t that interesting to the media,” he says. “I hope she can give us some occasional pearls of wisdom.”
McKeon argues being a “damn good listener” and having empathy for those who are doing it tough only enhances Wikramanayake’s leadership credentials. “She has done so much in her 30-odd years in the profession and if she connects well with someone, she finds a way to keep that relationship going,” he says. “Even as a CEO of Macquarie she still uses those as a learning experience.”
A former Macquarie US employee agrees. “She is open and very willing to listen to everyone from the top to the bottom,” he says. “She would listen to everyone, then soak in all that information and make an educated decision.” The new CEO is softly spoken and polite but the former Macquarie colleague says she “can be stern and doesn’t tolerate idiots”.
Wikramanayake gave short media interviews following Macquarie’s operational briefing last month, breaking with the tradition of restricting engagement to investors and analysts. But it is telling that her first sit-down, face-to-face 2019 interview was at an event at her alma mater – UNSW – last month. The Women in Super event at the UNSW Business School provided attendees with rare insights into what drives Wikramanayake. The event was packed and the audience listened intently as the new CEO cited resilience and optimism as keys to her success. She also revealed that she had a weakness for chocolate and, as a child, aspired to be a pilot or James Bond.
That appearance reflects another side to her – giving back to her community – which has been a hallmark of her time at Macquarie, particularly when she ran its philanthropic foundation. Already this year, Wikramanayake has maintained her community engagements including presenting to the Australian Brandenberg Orchestra and Career Trackers, a not-for-profit organisation assisting indigenous university students. She is also due to speak at the Financial Executive Women’s annual conference later this month.
She takes an active interest in schools and education in more disadvantaged areas, and has often travelled to schools in outer Sydney to speak about the merits of a career in finance, among other subjects. McKeon – also a former World Vision Australia board member – recalls that rather than donating to World Vision during his time there, Wikramanayake wanted to personally set up a scholarship to help disadvantaged children in Africa and South America finish their schooling. “Rather than give $1000 to World Vision she wanted to do it herself,” he says.
Since being appointed CEO in July she has met with Macquarie customers and their CEOs, staff, government representatives, central bankers, regulators, investors, community partners and industry peers. Her approach to leadership has impressed the managing director of board advisory firm BoardFocus, Judith MacCormick, who says a “continuous learning mindset” is needed for good leadership. MacCormick did not comment directly on Wikramanayake but those who know the CEO see that quality in her.
“The critical thing for the CEO is that they have the trust of the board and that they are transparent,” MacCormick says. “That they are not afraid to fail, as long as they are transparent about it. Individuals come with their own (CEO) style.”
MacCormick, also a former Heidrick & Struggles partner, says good leaders are big-picture strategic thinkers and know the detail. They have time for everyone, they know an answer and they ask questions to get others to solve problems. And they own or engage with the solution.
“The bad news is that it is often extroverts, and dare we say a disproportionate number of narcissists, who get recruited,” MacCormick says. “(They) do not have the necessary skills – technical and personal – but are great marketers of themselves. Their unfailing confidence in themselves makes those who are evaluating them for the top role feel confident that their organisation is in capable hands.”
The key test starts now for Wikramanayake as Macquarie’s shares hover close to record highs of $129.40 and the diversified group looks set to post a $3 billion-plus annual profit. She will have to balance the operational side of Macquarie’s sprawling businesses with her many commitments, including the Climate Finance Leadership Initiative, spearheaded by Michael Bloomberg. Its founding members are among the world’s most powerful finance executives, including Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon, AXA chief Thomas Buberl, HSBC chief John Flint, Government Pension Investment Fund (Japan) executive managing director Hiro Mizuno, Enel chief Francesco Starace … and Shemara Wikramanayake.
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