Ha, ha… Your editor couldn’t wait to take another look at the Macquarie Group remuneration table in their recent annual report.
Forget the ‘millionaires’ factory’ rubbish, and the jealousy angle. We’re more than happy for anyone to be paid as much as they can get. Providing it’s a decision made between an employee and an employer…
Rather than by some government bureaucrat with no idea of how to run a business in the private sector.
No, the reason we were so keen to see the Macquarie Group remuneration report was to check out how much Acting Chairman Kevin McCann is getting paid.
Because, I tell you what, based on the performance he gave yesterday at the AGM, he is worth every penny of it. In fact, give him a 20% pay rise.
Here’s McCann’s closing comments from yesterday’s AGM:
“In Australia, however, we should resist regulation which addresses issues faced by other jurisdictions, but which were not experienced here, because of the prudent risk management practices of Australian banks under a solid regulatory regime.”
He went on:
“Regulation should not operate to stifle a financial sector from providing innovative financial products of utility to business and general communities.”
For the record, according to the annual report, Kevin McCann will lock away a tidy $448,217 from his role as Acting Chairman. In our opinion that number should be rounded up to at least $500k.
We love the idea that after nearly a year of hounding and badgering the government to bail it out of trouble, Macquarie is now claiming “regulation should not operate to stifle a financial sector.”
We agree. But it’s a shame Mr. McCann and his colleagues weren’t wearing their free market caps ten months ago.
Back then they were more than happy for the government and regulators to interfere and ‘stifle’ the financial sector.
It was the government’s stifling that prevented the likes of Macquarie Bank and the 4-Pillars from collapsing. That’s right, make no mistake about it, without the various measures taken by the Australian government to prop them up, Australia’s banking system would have been laying dead in a ditch.
But don’t worry about that. That’s history – according to Macquarie. It’s much more important that the bank is able to provide “innovative financial products of utility to business and general communities.”
Hooray! Slip in the bit about ‘communities’ and you can say anything you like.
You tell ‘em McCann. Australians are crying out for more or your ‘innovative’ financial products. Get out of the way regulators and government, the people must be given what they want.
I mean, look at what the people of this nation could be missing out on…
Erm…
Look, don’t for a minute think that your editor has gone soft and that we’re fighting for the regulators, because we’re not.
In fact, we’re after the opposite. We would prefer to see the regulators keep their nose out now…
Just as we would have preferred to see the regulators keep their nose out of it last year – but of course, if they had done that then Mr. McCann wouldn’t be sitting in his taxpayer supported executive leather chair now.
Of course, it’s not just Macquarie that’s in a hole. As I mentioned above, the 4-Pillars were, and still are just as vulnerable.
You only have to look at the capital raisings and government backed debt issues all four of them have undertaken. In addition, once you work out how a bank really works you’ll soon realize that all the talk of the financial system deleveraging is, to put it mildly, hogwash.
In fact, we’d almost go so far to say that deleveraging is a financial impossibility for the banks. They are releveraging, and they are doing it fast.
As we told the workshop session at the Agora Financial Investment Symposium last week:
“Don’t believe what the mainstream press is telling you. The mainstream press is telling you the banks haven’t learned their lesson from the financial fallout. They are wrong. The banks have learned their lesson from the last twelve months. They have learned that they can take on as much risk as they like as they know the government will bail them out.”
Think about that for today. Then read tomorrow’s Money Morning where I’ll explain exactly why and how the banks must leverage themselves up as much as they possibly can.
Failure to do so will bring about the next collapse in financial markets…
And guess what? The housing market is an integral part of it.
But until then, take a look at what our slipstreaming, swarm trading, technical analyst Gabriel Andre has to say about Lead.
According to Paul van Eeden, president of Cranberry Capital, of all the commodities, “it is only Lead that has bottomed out.” That’s based on his inflation adjusted assumptions. See below for what Gabriel has to say about the dull metal…
Other Stuff on the Markets
The S&P/ASX200 fell 0.64% yesterday, while overnight on Wall Street the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 26 points. In Europe the FTSE100 gained 0.41% and the CAC40 added 1.04%.
The price of gold in Australian dollars is trading at $1,139.18, while in US Dollars it trading at $930.03.
The Aussie dollar weakened versus the US dollar and Japanese Yen, trading at USD$0.8168, and JPY77.63.
Crude oil slumped overnight, closing at USD$62.91.
For the biggest movers on the market yesterday click here…
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Kris, you might be interested in checking whether the recent substantial share holder notices of the CBA and WBC in AIO. Would these be positions taken by their investment / superannuation subsidiaries to bail out underwater key shareholders ie: commercial debt for equity swaps the liability of which should belong squarely with their banking divisions and that which should not be passed through the chinese wall to their superannuation investor customers at inflated non firesale prices.