When in December last year, the news about a bid on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) by an
Australian investment bank spread, it took many industry experts by surprise. The investment bank
which is hardly known outside Australia and UK (it is an offspring of the UK-based Hill Samuel & Co.
Limited) has hogged the limelight. Many in London though scoffed at the very idea of the bid but then
the bid was not from any minnows. It came from Australia’s number one investment bank and
probably one of the fastest growing among the global investment banks. What does the Macquarie
Bank do? Why does it want to acquire LSE? And importantly what has made it such a successful
investment bank?
“In less than a decade Macquarie, the Australian investment bank, has evolved from a local operator
into a worldwide financial group, with the clout and confidence to consider a bid for the London
Stock Exchange,” thus wrote Financial Times after the firm made its hostile bid for the LSE. Indeed,
the rise of Macquarie bank is commendable. Formed in 1969 as an offspring of the UK-based Hill
Samuel & Co. Limited, it began its operations in 1970 as a merchant bank with the name Hill Samuel
Australia (HAS) with only three staff on its payroll. It converted itself into a trading bank in 1985 in
response to the growing deregulation of the Australian financial markets. And it got a new name:
Macquarie Bank, adopted from Governor Lachlan Macquarie, who is credited with transforming the
early settlement in Australia from a penal colony into a dynamic economy. A decade later in July 1996,
it got listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX). On October 30, 1996, it was included in the
ASX’s All Ordinaries Index, with a market capitalization of approximately $1.3 bn. |
