Macquarie Group Ltd (ASX: MQG) shares are down 3.9% in early trade after giving the market a trading update for the first quarter of its financial year and the financial business also announced a new CEO.
Macquarie is Australia’s fifth largest bank, but earns most of its money from managing assets. It also earns a majority of its earnings from overseas. It’s currently conducting its annual general meeting (AGM).
FY19 update
Macquarie CEO Nicholas Moore said that the financial company’s operating groups were performing well, in line with expectations and the first quarter of FY19 is better than the first quarter of FY18. However, it’s slightly down on the strong final quarter of FY18.
Macquarie said that Macquarie Asset Management had $534.1 billion in assets under management (AUM) at 30 June 2018, which was up 8% compared to 31 March 2018.
The company thinks the FY19 result will be broadly in-line with the FY18 result.
New CEO
Chairman Peter Wayne announced that Nicholas Moore would be retiring effective 30 November 2018. He will be replaced by Shemara Wikramanayake, who is currently head of Macquarie Asset Management.
Mr Moore said: “I have worked with Shemara for more than 30 years and I am reassured in deciding to retire later this year that I leave Macquarie in a strong position and in safe hands.”
As we wrote here, Moore earned more than $19 million in 2018, having played a part in resurrecting the bank from the depths of the Global Financial Crisis in 2008/2009.
