tipped for record profit

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Australia's Macquarie bank tipped to report record profit
Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 15-May-2006 14:27 hrs
The Macquarie Bank Corporate headquarters in Sydney. Macquarie is set to report a record full year cash profit of more than 900 million dollars (692 million US), boosted by its growing Asian operations, analysts said.

Australian investment bank Macquarie is set to report a record full year cash profit of more than 900 million dollars (692 million US), boosted by its growing Asian operations, analysts said.

This would beat Macquarie Bank Ltd's own forecast made in February of a full year result slightly up on last year's 823 million dollars, they said.

The strong fee-driven result is expected to reflect the completion of a series of deals before March 30 and a rebound in overseas trading income.
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The year to March cash net profit, which strips out one-off items and accounting adjustments is expected to be about 880 million dollars, up from last year's 812 million dollars.
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Macquarie manages more than 112 billion dollars of assets around the world, ranging from airports and toll roads to utilities and business properties.
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Goldman Sachs JBWere banking analyst James Freeman, who is forecasting an 875 million dollar cash net profit, said Macquarie will report strong profit growth aided by large one off transactions such as a profit on its Korea infrastructure fund launched late in the year.
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Freeman said the investment bank is benefiting from a strong performance from its Asian equities business and increasingly the investment bank activities within Asia.
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He said earnings guidance is expected to be solid although there is some doubt about the level of performance fees as a number of Macquarie Bank listed funds are materially underperforming their indexes.
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ABN Amro is forecasting a headline net profit of 917 million dollars, noting that the bank had plenty of deals in the pipeline at the end of the first half.
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The firm disagreed with criticism that Macquarie's planned last minute counterbid for ports operator Patrick Corp showed the bank was running out of growth options.
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Macquarie said last week it would not go ahead with its offer as a key consortium member, Singapore's PSA International, had withdrawn.
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The Macquarie-led consortium's withdrawal cleared the way for transport logistics group Toll Holdings Ltd, to gain control of Patrick last week via a 6.0 billion dollar share and cash offer. — AFP