Macquarie advisers out the door, Crawford cites ‘cost management’
Macquarie’s banking and financial services arm has cut the number of advisers on its books under the premise of a restructure, Street Talk understands.
Private wealth sits within Macquarie’s banking and financial services. Bloomberg
Sources told this column the meetings were held between staff, Macquarie’s internal human resources unit, and the head of the private bank division, Justin Crawford, on Monday afternoon. Crawford cited cost management and poor performance in other areas of the business, the sources said.
On the hit list are private bankers Graham Kaplan, Greg Armstrong, Nick Walter, Karen Downs, Joel Tilbrook, Steve Wilson, among others. More names are expected to surface.
A spokesperson for Macquarie declined to comment.
The lay-offs reflect a changing environment both internally and externally as the bank’s business priorities and customer demands shift.
Macquarie’s wealth management division was merged with the private bank in 2018 as the firm retreated from the scandal-prone local wealth advice industry, resulting in job losses.
The wealth business is focused on two key areas – servicing high-net-worth clients and its wealth platform.
Macquarie’s banking and financial services unit has around 3800 people servicing 1.8 million clients. The unit accounted for 12 per cent of the group’s net profit in financial year 2023. Funds on the platform last sat at $123.1 billion.
The once-mighty private wealth division of Macquarie has had a tumultuous decade. It was slapped with a two-year enforceable undertaking after the corporate regulator accused it of misclassifying clients, sloppy paperwork and rampant cheating on continuous professional development exams. The undertaking came to an end in 2015, but Macquarie
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