Macquarie Group has managed to shake off market volatility to make a solid start to the new financial year, albeit at levels lower than 12 months earlier, prompting it to caution the market that matching last year’s record profit would be challenging.
Addressing the group’s annual general meeting in Melbourne, Macquarie Group managing director and chief executive Nicholas Moore said all business groups were operating profitably for the three months ending June 30, albeit lower than for the same quarter last year.
“Macquarie’s businesses are performing relatively well despite market conditions deteriorating since this time last year,” he said.
Moore said that during the last quarter, good contributions had been made by the corporate finance and advice, commodities related trading, foreign exchange and institutional and retail broking businesses, including equity derivatives.
Discussing the group’s outlook, Moore said market conditions continued to make short-term forecasting more difficult than usual and the current state of financial markets meant that repeating last year’s record profit of $1.8 billion was becoming increasingly challenging.
