Macquarie Group names Greg Ward as seventh CEO; shares little changed

By: Byron Kaye Source: Reuters

SYDNEY, July 23 (Reuters) – While Greg Ward was building Macquarie Group's mortgage book to the fifth-largest in Australia, he was also cutting a figure as a respectable Porsche racer—with few wins but, more importantly according to motoring experts, few serious mishaps.

Ward was named the investment bank's seventh CEO in nearly 60 years on Thursday. Racing industry veterans joined investors in hailing a person of ambition and caution. Shares of Macquarie were little changed after the news, reflecting a sense of stability at a time of geopolitical and economic disruption.

As at the bank, there is no room for recklessness in racing.

"It needs exceptional attention to detail and preparation," said Dave Shylan, president of New South Wales Production Touring Cars, who was familiar with Ward's record racing Porsche GTS cup cars. "There's no mucking around. It's far too expensive a category."

Early Career and Rise at Macquarie

Ward, who attended the coincidentally named Macquarie University in Sydney, joined Macquarie Bank soon after its 1996 listing. The following year, at the age of 29, he was made its chief financial officer—a role that involved navigating writedowns and substantial profit declines during the 2008 and 2009 financial crisis.

The bank's shares took nearly a decade to recover, but Ward carved out a racing side-career. In 2008, he took first place in the GT Challenge Round in his Porsche GT3 Cup Car, according to media reports.

Arthur Magaitis, president of the NSW Production Sports Racing Cars Association, which has hosted races in which Ward competed, viewed him as "fierce, competitive" and, like most Porsche racers, "data driven."

Ward kept competing until at least 2020, according to a motorsports database. On a call with journalists on Thursday, he said he had not raced in years.

Personal Investments and Business Strategy

Ward also bought and sold a winery in the Hunter Valley, north of Sydney, in the 2000s, then spent A$8.4 million ($5.9 million) on a 40-hectare country estate to the south—complete with vineyard and cellar door—in 2020.

Through all this, Macquarie made headlines building an empire of infrastructure funds, renewable energy investments, and commodities trading operations spanning Europe, North America, and Asia.

But Ward took a different path. In 2013, he became head of one of the company's only Australia-only divisions: retail banking, a business with less than 1% of a mortgage market that had been dominated for decades by four lenders.

He adopted a relatively low-cost, online-only, branchless model, using a combination of competitive lending rates and rapid, technology-powered approvals to take customers from legacy rivals—which sometimes offered cash bonuses to compete in return.

Results and Outlook

Ward leaves the unit with nearly A$200 billion in mortgages and more than 7% of the market, according to regulator data—within striking distance of No. 4 lender ANZ's 13%, analysts say.

"Greg knows the business well and his track record's been good," said Andy Forster, a portfolio manager at Argo Investments, which holds Macquarie shares. "I don't think anything is radically going to change."

($1 = 1.4255 Australian dollars)

Reporting by Byron Kaye; Additional reporting by Christine Chen; Editing by Sonali Paul