Financial journalists, Joyce Moullakis and Chris Wright, Euromoney’s Asia correspondent, reveals the extraordinary story of how a small Australian merchant bank took on the world, became a global giant and the culture behind their entrepreneurial effort. Macquarie is everywhere, an investment bank, a commodities player and an international leader in infrastructure fund management, Macquarie has entered your life, no matter where in the world you’re reading this book. Impressive Australian success story with a formidable global reach, with a nickname “Millionaires’ factory”, whose clients  were usually high net worth individuals to begin with, and paid extraordinary salaries and bonuses to its staff.  These are people who can make more money in a day than most of us make in a year and whose actions can influence financial markets across the world. Many critical industries in the UK, the US, Canada, Europe and South Korea rely heavily on Macquarie Group’s involvement and expertise, the team that can turn disaster into an opportunity by managing and mitigating risks. The authors discuss Macquarie’s failures as well as its successes, the success that benefited the small  shareholder, as well as the organization and its wealthy clients. If you’d bought $100 of Macquarie shares back in the beginning, that would now be worth around $10, 000/

The bank founded in Australia in 1969, to its presence in 33 markets today, identifies the big decisions that have allowed the bank to thrive where others have floundered, and the unique Macquarie ability to spot a niche which only few others can see. They also uncovers the dramas, the turf fights, the scandals and the failures, as well as the supercharged salaries and bonuses that earned them the nickname “the millionaires’ factory”.

The culture that drives Macquarie is unique “loose-tight” approach to risk, its empowerment of individual staff to try new things, and its knack for turning market calamities into opportunities. Markets move and Macquarie has reinvented itself time and again as they do so, but one thing never changes it’s seldom on the wrong side of the deal.

“How a successful financial institution with a global footprint can grow through good and bad times, because of the quality of people”  Don Argus AC, Member of Australian Advisory Council of Bank of America.

The Millionaires’ Factory by Joyce Moullakis and Chris Wright, Allen and Unwin, £18.99, 520 pages.