A look into MQG's new HQ.Shemara Wikramanayake is in residence....

A look into MQG's new HQ.

Shemara Wikramanayake is in residence. She’s in a red jacket, sitting behind her desk, tapping away on a computer like so many others in Macquarie Group’s new headquarters at 1 Elizabeth Street, just off Martin Place in Sydney.

You can see the CEO from the client floor, home to Macquarie’s 24-seat boardroom – where chairman Glenn Stevens rules from one side of the oval table and all seats have their own microphone – a nearby dining room, and long corridors of small and medium-sized meeting rooms.

An atrium connects the mid-level floors. AFR

You can see her from the floors above and below. Wikramanayake is sandwiched somewhere between Macquarie Capital’s investment banking unit and the retail bankers recalled to HQ from its satellite office (and former headquarters) on Shelley Street, a 10-minute walk away.

You get the feeling she’d be OK for any of Macquarie’s 9000 Sydney-based staff to see her. They’ll all be in the new HQ after this weekend, as five offices are merged into one. She’s certainly not hiding. It is unpretentious, like her.

Her inward-facing office, with glass walls, a desk and a table large enough to host a board meeting, carries on a traditional setup by her former chief executive and mentor Nicholas Moore. Moore wanted to look inward, across the central atrium, at the Macquarie worker bees.

Wikramanayake’s empire stretches both buildings – Moore’s old home at 50 Martin Place and the adjacent 1 Elizabeth. Together, they’re Macquarie’s new “campus”.

Some divisions on the lower floors – the retail bankers, for example – stretch across both buildings, which are attached in five places. Retail banking boss Greg Ward, a Macquarie veteran, is known to joke that he’s never done more steps – his combined floor is long enough to be a decent par four.

Shemara Wikramanayake isn’t hiding. David Rowe

Macquarie’s office is busy. There are not many empty desks. Some divisions hot desk, others have permanent homes. There is no company-wide policy. There’s a bit more hustle in the air than at Commonwealth Bank’s Eveleigh office, or Westpac HQ just down the road, reflecting Macquarie’s roots as a merchant bank rather than a mortgage provider.

There are lots of kitchens, some with cereal, nuts and even newspapers, and internal cafes, where staff pay for food and coffee. There are lots of break-out areas designed for little meetings, and see-through glass walls that act as information barriers. It is modern (exposed ceilings), architectural and about a decade in planning.

Macquarie staff start their day on level one, just up off the street.

They get through the security gates without a pass – there are face scanners – and into the quick lifts. The bank has staff on the first 27 floors and is mulling whether to sub-let a few more floors higher up (they get smaller the higher the building goes). The top floor is Macquarie’s, although it’s due to be fit out and open until next year. It will be a client/entertainment area.

The first few floors are client areas, too – a lounge for casual meetings and an art gallery on level two (where staff can buy $1000 paintings).

Levels three and four are an internal conference centre – dubbed ILUMINA – with training rooms, function areas (including bars), a 168-seat theatre and a room big enough to haul in round tables and hold a corporate awards night.

It is designed to be leased out at night times and on weekends, which is so Macquarie – try to make money even while you sleep. (Macquarie only has the building because it lobbed an unsolicited proposal over the site, which includes a new metro station below.)

From there it is banking and financial services (deposits, mortgages, wealth management), Macquarie Capital (investment bankers), commodities and markets (traders), and Macquarie Asset Management (funds management), in that order. It’s pretty light everywhere.

In the old days, trading desks had to be as close to the ground floor as possible to house the servers, computing equipment, power and cooling systems. It’s equipment-lighter these days, so the traders now look out among the city’s rooftops.

That’s one of the big differences between Macquarie and the Sydney offices of rival investment banks like Goldman Sachs, UBS, Barrenjoey and Morgan Stanley. They’re all high up in tall towers at the north end of the city, overlooking Sydney Harbour, the Botanic Gardens, or both. Macquarie is more among Martin Place’s rooftops – its bankers can sit outside on level 10 should they have time to leave their desks for lunch.

The other difference is the size. Macquarie’s 27 floors – and 11 floors next door – dwarfs its Wall Street/European/Asian investment banks and asset manager rivals operating in Australia.

It is a reminder that this is Australia’s true global financial services success story. The new head office oversees businesses that recorded $16.9 billion net operating income and $3.5 billion profit last financial year. Nearly half of its staff work from the Sydney office.