Bill Moss Quits Millionaires Factory 'to Test Many Ideas'

Sydney Morning Herald

Wednesday February 14, 2007

Danny John

MACQUARIE Bank yesterday signalled a changing of the guard that has run the institution since the mid-1980s, with the resignation of Bill Moss as head of its once all-powerful banking and property arm.

Mr Moss's decision to retire after 22 years at Macquarie, where he built a $23 billion global property assets management empire from scratch, has cleared the way for his investment banking rival Nicholas Moore to succeed long-serving chief executive Allan Moss.

His departure also gives senior executives a freer hand in reshaping the bank's operations as it creates a new holding company structure to cope with its international expansion.

Mr Moss, 52, has jealously guarded the independence of banking and property since its formation as a separate division in 1998 even though its status as the driver of Macquarie's fast-growing profits has been eclipsed by Mr Moore's investment banking group in the past four years.

Mr Moss was seen in the late 1990s as a successor to his CEO namesake, but his star has waned as Mr Moore's has risen. Investment banking now accounts for more than 40 per cent of Macquarie's business while banking and property is the smallest contributor at just 10 per cent.

However, Mr Moss has continued to benefit hugely from the operations of the Millionaires Factory. Last year he earned $15 million and he is expected to take home a similar sum this year as Macquarie enjoys yet another record profit.

According to the bank's most recent annual report, he also owns almost 270,000 shares, which at yesterday's close of $82.64 values his holding at about $22 million. If he holds onto them, annual dividends would provide him with a gross income of $580,000. He has options over another 297,000 shares.

Mr Moss leaves at the end of March, almost 22 years to the day when the then newly named Macquarie Bank opened its first retail branch in Sydney. He is being replaced by his younger deputies, Stephen Girdis and Tony Gill, who will separately run real estate and banking and securitisation.

Mr Moss said that it had been a long time in one job and "that there are many ideas that I have to test".

While Macquarie indicated yesterday that the new operations would still be run under the one banner, the set-up will eventually make it easier to dismantle the banking and property group and merge Mr Girdis and Mr Gill's businesses into one of the three other main divisions.

Allan Moss described Mr Moss as an "extraordinary manager and entrepreneur" and praised him for creating a business that now earns hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

But analysts said that his departure had been on the cards for some time given that he had taken on other interests in recent years.

A champion of the physically disabled, Mr Moss grabbed attention last year when he launched Lime Taxis, a luxury wheelchair-accessible fleet service in Sydney.

Other interests outside Macquarie Bank have extended to an Aboriginal tourism project in central Australia and he is also a director of the Sydney Kings basketball team.

In recent times he has found himself in the public eye over a number of legal actions he has served, most recently last week, when he sued a former partner in the Gunya Tourism venture in an effort to recover $20,000 in a disputed loan.

© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald

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