Better the devil you know: a back-to-basics Macquarie

Two years after it skirted the precipice of the global credit crunch, who, or what, is Macquarie Group?

Gone are the listed infrastructure satellites. Gone is the fee-generating externally managed funds model. Long gone is boom-time boss Allan Moss.

Presenting the bank's 2010 full-year result in his latter-day role as chief austerity officer, Nicholas Moore seemed more certain of what Macquarie is not.

With Goldman Sachs fingered in a US Senate inquiry this week for its role in fuelling the credit crisis, Moore was asked if self-righteous Goldman executives believed they were doing God's work, perhaps Macquarie was doing the devil's work?

"We're not Goldman Sachs," Moore assured his audience.

Well, not that much like them, given Macquarie's accounts directly compare the bank with Goldman when it comes to setting Macquarie's rapidly rebounding remuneration levels.

After all, comparisons with other industry peers are a little more difficult these days, the bank's accounts show.

"As a result of the changes in the investment banking landscape, Macquarie considered its peer group in light of the absence of Babcock & Brown, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers." All gone to meet their maker.

Macquarie was bolstered by the use of the Australian taxpayer's AAA-rated government credit rating to help it raise money overseas and the short-selling ban on financial stocks. But it was forced to change.

Just three years ago, the listed investment bank made about a quarter of its money from fees from the listed managed fund model. Moore has been busy recasting Macquarie and it is now beginning to resemble something far different.

Asked to describe it, he said: "There are elements of our business that are very much investment banking style, commercial banking, funds management." On top of that, it has been buying energy trading and asset management businesses in the US, taking market share on Wall Street where investment banking has been brought to its knees.

Macquarie 2.0 sounds an awful lot like a traditional investment bank.

Moore's salary, certainly, is nudging back towards double-digit million-dollar territory.

Analysts still want to know what's next. But the bank known as the millionaire's factory is at least hiring again. Prestige car yards and real estate agents can breathe easy.