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Macquarie has just paid commodities boss Simon Wright A$35.4 million, more than the A$26.5 million awarded to chief executive Shemara Wikramanayake. On paper, that looks like a company letting an employee outrank the boss. Inside Macquarie, it points to something much bigger: the people closest to the money-making machine can end up becoming more valuable than the person at the top.
Macquarie’s pay system keeps attracting attention for exactly that reason. Most companies are built around hierarchy, where the chief executive sits above everyone else financially as well as symbolically. Macquarie operates differently. It has created a culture where title matters less than results, and where executives who generate enormous returns can earn sums that make ordinary corporate pay structures look old-fashioned.
The latest figures help explain it. Wright leads Macquarie’s commodities and global markets division, where profit rose 49 per cent in the year to March. The group’s annual net income climbed 30 per cent to A$4.9 billion, helped by strong results across the business but led by the commodities arm. That division benefited from asset sales, asset financing, and a rise in client hedging activity across gas, oil and power markets.
What makes Macquarie unusual is that the business often becomes stronger when the outside world becomes less stable. Many companies fear volatility because it disrupts planning, weakens demand and makes costs harder to predict. Macquarie has spent years building one of its biggest businesses around helping clients survive exactly that kind of instability.
When energy markets swing violently, large companies suddenly face risks they cannot ignore. Airlines worry about fuel prices exploding. Utilities worry about gas supply. Industrial groups worry about power costs wiping out margins. Producers and buyers need protection from sudden price shocks. That is where Macquarie’s trading and hedging business becomes incredibly valuable. Market chaos creates pressure for clients, but it also creates opportunity for the firms best positioned to manage the risk.
That puts the pay story in a different light. This is not simply a case of one executive earning more than the CEO. It reflects a business where the people closest to the strongest source of profit can become more financially important than the people with the highest titles. In years when the commodities division dominates earnings, the executive running it can end up carrying enormous weight inside the organisation.
Macquarie’s “millionaires’ factory” nickname starts making more sense when viewed through that lens. The company’s profit-share model is designed to reward exceptional earners aggressively when the returns justify it. Former commodities boss Nick O’Kane received A$58 million in 2023 before leaving for Mercuria, which shows Wright’s package is part of a long-running pattern rather than a one-off moment.
Investors have had to make peace with the uncomfortable side of that system. The numbers can look extreme, especially at a time when executive pay faces constant scrutiny.
Macquarie has already faced criticism over compensation, while regulatory investigations and fines forced reductions to some executive profit-share awards. Wikramanayake’s performance-based pay was reduced by A$7 million, while Wright’s was cut by A$1.7 million.
Even so, shareholders usually become far more forgiving when huge payouts are tied directly to visible performance. Macquarie’s return on equity rose from 11 per cent to 14 per cent, while profit growth spread across asset management, banking and investment advisory. Still, the commodities division once again showed why the company’s biggest rewards often flow toward the teams generating the fastest-growing profits.
Seen another way, Macquarie has managed to turn something many companies would avoid into a competitive advantage. Plenty of businesses claim they reward performance, but far fewer are willing to build a structure where that principle visibly overrides hierarchy. Macquarie’s approach sends a very direct message: if you generate enough value, the organisation may reward you more than the chief executive.
There are obvious dangers in a system like that. High-powered incentives can attract scrutiny, encourage aggressive behaviour and make inequality inside the company harder to defend publicly. At the same time, the model attracts ambitious people who expect to be rewarded directly for the profits they create. In trading, infrastructure and financial markets, that can become a powerful recruiting and retention tool.
The bigger picture goes well beyond one Australian bank. The highest rewards increasingly flow to people who know how to operate during periods of uncertainty, not simply to those managing steady growth. In calmer industries, leadership is often associated with predictability and control. In Macquarie’s world, enormous fortunes can be built by understanding risk faster and more aggressively than competitors.
That shift says a lot about how parts of modern finance now work. The chief executive remains the public face of the company, but the largest rewards can end up flowing toward executives sitting closest to the moments where markets break down, clients panic and volatility suddenly becomes profitable.
Macquarie’s pay structure will probably continue attracting criticism because it feels uncomfortable from the outside. But the discomfort is partly the point. The company is effectively arguing that extraordinary rewards are justified when they are tied to extraordinary returns. As long as profits keep arriving, many investors appear willing to accept a structure where the boss is not always the highest-paid person in the building.
In the end, the company is not accidentally paying a trader more than its CEO. It has built a business where instability can become opportunity, where risk can become influence, and where the people closest to that machine can end up becoming the most valuable people inside the company.