Macquarie Bank has sought to use its annual general meeting to defend its remuneration strategy for senior executives.
The bank’s chairman, David Clarke, used his address to shareholders to detail Macquarie’s approach to executive remuneration and claimed that its over-arching goal was to drive shareholder returns over the short and longer term.
Clarke also pointed out that remuneration levels needed to reflect the fact that nearly half of the bank’s operating income now comes from international activities, with 36 per cent of the bank’s director level staff being based overseas.
“We are therefore competing for high quality staff in all of the world’s major financial centres,” he said. “In order to succeed, the bank’s remuneration needs to be broadly in line with that of other investment banks based in cities like New York and London,” Clarke said.
