Well, good morning, fellow shareholders. Welcome to Macquarie's Annual General Meeting for 2022. My name's Glenn Stevens, and I'm privileged to chair the board of your company. I note that a quorum is present, and I formally declare the meeting open. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation , and pay my respects to elders past and present. You've just heard a little in the videos about our retail banking businesses and the way our teams worked together on the acquisition of a large U.S. asset management firm, Waddell & Reed . After the refreshment break, later on, you'll hear about some of the work we're doing in our commodities and global markets business and in Macquarie Capital.
I hope those will provide you with some insight into the various activities of the company. Well, we're meeting in Melbourne today for the first time since 2017, continuing a tradition of rotating our meetings between Sydney and Melbourne. That tradition's been interrupted in the past few years with COVID, obviously. Today, we've decided to hold a hybrid meeting here in Melbourne and with people online. It's great to see so many of you joining us here today. Joining me today up on the podium is your board, including non-executive directors Jillian Broadbent , Philip Coffey , Michael Coleman, Michelle Hinchliffe . Rebecca McGrath is joining remotely, Mike Roche and Nicola Wakefield Evans . Alongside me is our CEO, Shemara Wikramanayake , our Chief Financial Officer, Alex Harvey , and on to my right, our Company Secretary, Dennis Leong .
Also present are Macquarie Bank Non-Executive Director, Ian Saines , and members of Macquarie's Executive Committee, who are joining us either in person or remotely. The meeting will proceed as follows. Firstly, I'll outline some highlights of the past financial year. Shemara will then take you through the group's 2022 result in more detail, update you on the first quarter of the current financial year, and the outlook for the remainder of the year. Then we'll hear from directors seeking re-election today, Jillian Broadbent and Philip Coffey. We'll hear from Michelle Hinchliffe, who is seeking election for the first time. I'll then formally open the polls. At that point, we will break for about half an hour, and during that time, those attending in person will be able to meet with members of the board and senior management over refreshments.
We encourage you to take that opportunity to come and chat, particularly if you're unable to stay for the formal business. For those participating online, you'll be notified on your screen when the meeting is about to recommence. We'll then reconvene for the final part of the meeting to discuss the formal items of business and take questions on all items at the same time. To give all shareholders the opportunity to speak, we'll take written questions, received prior to the meeting first, and those from online participants, giving preference to those who have not already asked a question. There'll be ample opportunity for shareholders to address the meeting if you wish to do so. I remind you that recording devices, photographic equipment, and mobile phones should not be used during the meeting.
The meeting is being webcast live on Macquarie's website, and you'll be able to view a recording of the meeting on the site, from this evening. Those attending online can start to send in their questions from now by clicking on the speech icon on your screen. Please note that, regardless of when you submit the question, we will address all of them during the formal business of the meeting later on, as is our customary practice. We will try to ensure that all topics of interest are addressed in our responses. We may moderate, or amalgamate some of the online questions if there are multiple questions on the same topic. Well, Shemara will take you through performance in detail, but let me begin with a few highlights, from the year.
The company's performance reflects strong results across the organization as our operating businesses and support groups again delivered on their commitment to supporting clients, partners, and communities. The group earned a record profit of AUD 4.7 billion in fiscal 2022. That was up 56% on the fiscal 2021 result, which itself had been a record year. Macquarie recorded strong financial metrics, including in operating income, earnings per share, and dividends per share. Shareholders received a full-year dividend of AUD 6.22 per ordinary share, franked at 40%. That was up from AUD 4.70 per share in the previous year. 50% of earnings, or about AUD 2.4 billion, has been returned to shareholders in dividends, with the dividend payout ratio balancing, on the one hand, returns to shareholders with the opportunities that management sees on the other to invest for future growth.
Our policy of a 50%-70% dividend payout ratio is unchanged. Let me say a little bit about risk culture and conduct, an area where the board and management spend considerable time. The company's performance over more than half a century has come essentially by empowering teams to harness their capabilities to service clients, investors, and communities. This opportunity is balanced with strong accountability for owning and managing the risk. The primary responsibility for risk resides, as it must, at the individual and at the business level, business unit level. Robust oversight is provided by our risk management group, and then there's further independent, objective, risk-based assurance provided by the internal audit division. Integrity underpins everything we do. The risk management framework is supported by a remuneration framework and a consequence management process aimed at encouraging appropriate behaviors and discouraging inappropriate behavior.
While I'm on remuneration, APRA's new Prudential Standard for Remuneration, known as CPS 511, will come into effect for Macquarie on the 1st of January, 2023. Over the past year, the board undertook a detailed review of our framework to address the CPS 511 requirements. In doing so, we considered the perspectives of shareholders, regulators, we paid attention to global peer group comparisons, and of course, the increased global competition for talent in all of the areas where Macquarie operates. The changes are being implemented in a phased approach, and we've disclosed all the details of that in the remuneration report. Now, while the businesses have been busy, our support areas have been no less busy, and their collaboration in maintaining risk, conduct, and culture at a high level is an important example. Leadership and staff training has included a focus on resiliency and inclusive leadership.
Comprehensive regulatory awareness training was rolled out to staff responsible for compliance and engagement, with a focus on the increasing expectations of our regulators in our regulatory engagement principles. The group's integrity office is an independent function that's been in place for 24 years. It reports directly to the CEO, and it meets regularly with the chair and has a full schedule of training and development. More than 6,000 staff received tailored training and leadership development over the past year, focused on conduct, supervision in a hybrid working environment, integrity, speaking up, and ensuring the psychological safety to do so. Macquarie's purpose is empowering people to innovate and invest for a better future. That statement of purpose sits alongside our long-held principles of opportunity, accountability, and integrity. The purpose explains why Macquarie does business, and our principles define how we do business.
In today's presentations, you'll see many of the examples of those purposes and principles at work across our client activities, the work of the foundation, and the support we've provided to communities through the uncertainty of the past two years. Environmental, social, and governance matters remain an area of significant focus for the Group and the Board, given our responsibilities to clients, shareholders, communities, our own staff, and the environment. Macquarie is active right across the ESG spectrum.
In the area of direct investment, including across a range of emissions reduction solutions and social infrastructure, in engagement in forums where we can share our expertise to help inform policies that support better ESG outcomes, in supporting reporting standards to promote better measurement of ESG impacts, and in putting in place the policies and practices that foster sound and measurable ESG outcomes in our investments, in our workplaces, in our capabilities, and among our staff. Macquarie continues to drive a wide range of practical initiatives, including in the past year across business activities, conduct and culture, direct operations, and engagement with clients, staff, and communities. As just one example, as of March 2022, the group had 46 GW of green energy assets either in development, in operation, or under management.
For every dollar invested in conventional energy, the group is investing over AUD 6 dollars in renewable energy. For almost two decades, Macquarie teams have worked with governments and clients to enable the energy transition and to advance practical solutions to the climate challenge. We've built market-leading capabilities in investing directly into climate mitigation and adaptation infrastructure. These capabilities are also supporting clients and portfolio companies to decarbonize their activities. We're active globally in projects that address a broad range of emission sources where we have specific expertise. These include energy, agriculture, waste, transportation, real estate, and industry. We act as a developer of new solutions and a manager of operational assets, and we're the world's leading advisor in renewables.
Having played a key role in establishing wind and solar as investable asset classes, our objective is to scale these proven technologies as quickly as possible. We're also continuing to innovate in emerging areas of opportunity, such as hydrogen, carbon capture use and storage, energy storage, future feed for livestock, electric vehicles, sustainable aviation fuels, and market solutions like voluntary carbon markets. Now recently, we moved the Green Investment Group into Macquarie Asset Management, and that will allow us to work with our clients to catalyze much larger quantities of private capital to address the climate challenge. Last year, as you know, Macquarie committed to align our financing activities with the global goal of net zero by 2050. To that end, over the past year, our teams have been working on a detailed assessment to inform our first Macquarie net zero plan, which we will publish later this year.
In line with most of the finance sector, our initial focus will be on fossil fuels and motor vehicles, which are the highest emitting sectors. Our equity investment and lending in fossil fuels is actually quite small relative to the industry and relative to our own balance sheet at around 0.5% of our portfolio. Nonetheless, we've been working to understand the associated emissions and to determine 2030 goals that will set us on the right path to achieving the 2050 commitment. For our own operations, we're committed to net zero by 2025. In fiscal 2022, we sourced the equivalent of 100% of our electricity consumption from renewable sources across our global offices and data centers. We're also developing emissions reduction strategies across other aspects of our own operations, including in procurement.
Finally, we have committed to managing our asset management portfolio in line with global net zero by 2040. In this area, we generally take a hold and fix approach to higher emission assets and believe we're well-placed to reduce overall emissions by working to support their transition. Macquarie Asset Management is working on asset-level plans that determine baseload emissions, interim targets, and reduction strategies, and to sharing best practice across its portfolio. Turning to the questions of diversity, equity, and inclusion, we believe the diversity of our people is one of our great strengths. An inclusive, equitable workplace where people are respected, valued for their contribution, and empowered to reach their full potential enables us to deliver more for our shareholders and our communities. That work is ongoing. It's never complete, but we're making very good progress.
It's also worth recognizing, as we do on this slide, the organizations with whom we partnered in their efforts in this space. The Macquarie Group Foundation plays a vital role in how Macquarie lives out its purpose, building on our strong staff-led approach to giving. Focusing on the communities where our people live and work enables a better understanding of local needs. It also enables us to leverage our staff time and expertise and networks for greater impact. In fiscal 2022, our people and the foundation together contributed AUD 44 million in funding and thousands of hours of time to communities right around the world. In addition, the remainder of the AUD 20 million COVID-19 fund established in 2020 was fully deployed over the past year to 40 organizations in 32 countries.
There was also further deployment of the AUD 50 million grants announced in 2019 to coincide with Macquarie's 50th anniversary. A further one-off AUD 20 million additional allocation was made in fiscal 2022 to expand the foundation's social impact investing program. That program addresses employment, education, and economic empowerment. Finally, in support of communities and families across Ukraine, the foundation and Macquarie employees together donated over AUD 3.5 million to the critical humanitarian and refugee response for that country. Since its inception in 1985, the foundation's total giving has now exceeded AUD half a billion. Quite a significant milestone. Let me turn to an update regarding the board. As we've previously noted to shareholders, Macquarie has been working to strengthen the voice of Macquarie Bank within the group.
We've made good progress on a comprehensive plan that's been agreed with APRA. There are a number of detailed work programs within that across governance, remuneration, risk culture, regulatory reporting, prudential risk management, and a simplified group structure. As part of the governance work stream, we'll be appointing three bank-only non-executive directors to the Macquarie Bank Board. That's a similar arrangement that you see in other countries where a banking entity sits within a broader group structure. In May, we welcomed Ian Saines , who's here today, as our first bank-only non-executive director or BOND, as we call them. It's also known to shareholders that Michael Coleman will step off the Macquarie Group Board today after 10 years on the group board. I'm pleased to advise that Mr. Coleman has agreed to remain on the Macquarie Bank board for a further two years, thereby becoming our second non-exec.
We expect to announce a third appointment in due course. Well, as I conclude these opening remarks, I'd like to thank my colleagues on the board for their dedication, their hard work, their insights, and the diverse perspectives that they bring to our deliberations. I want to extend a special welcome to Michelle, seeking election today, having joined the board earlier this year, and Michelle will speak to you soon, as will Jillian and Philip, who are seeking re-election today. I wanna pay particular tribute to my predecessor as chair, Peter Warne, for his major contribution to Macquarie over many years, including six as chair of the board.
Peter had, and all the directors would agree with me here, a remarkable grasp of the diverse range of Macquarie's businesses. He was always available, and he capably steered the organization through a very significant period, including through a change of CEO and of course, most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic. Thank you, Peter. I want also to acknowledge the long and exceptional service of our company secretary, Dennis Leong, who has indicated his intention to retire at the end of this year after more than 40 years with Macquarie. In that time, Dennis has worked with all six of our CEOs and all four of our chairs.
It seems to have been the last, the fourth chair that's broken the camel's back here. Dennis has been company secretary since 1983, ahead of the IPO in 1996, and today is the 29th AGM that Dennis has overseen. Dennis, congratulations and thank you, and we'll miss you. It remains for me on your behalf, shareholders, to thank the management team and the staff for their outstanding efforts in delivering a record result through a time of great uncertainty. This team, ably led by Shemara, continues to grow uniquely positioned franchises that address meaningful needs in our communities around the world, and that's the secret of our success. Fellow shareholders, that concludes my opening remarks. Thank you for your attention and for your support of Macquarie.
I'll now hand over to Shemara to take you through the results in more detail and update on recent performance. Shemara, thank you.
Great. Thank you, Glenn, and welcome everybody from me to those of you in the room and also people joining us virtually. As Glenn said, I will take you through the results for the last financial year, this most recent quarter, and then the outlook for our business in the coming year. Before doing that, I just wanted to note that we're proud that this is our 53rd year since inception of unbroken profitability. With our 26th year anniversary of listing tomorrow, I thought it was worth noting in the top line of that table there that we have ranked first or second in terms of total shareholder returns across all the indices in which we're included, particularly some major global financial services indices.
Turning to this year's result, as Glenn said, the headline, we delivered a result last financial year of AUD 4.706 billion. That was up 56% on the prior year, and it was a return on equity of 18.7%, in this current rate environment. We think a good result for shareholders. In terms of how that was made up out of our operating groups, over on the right of this slide, you can see there was a 92% increase in the contribution from our market-facing businesses. That was because we had a particularly buoyant environment last year, which was very conducive to those businesses.
Our two annuity businesses also grew their earnings 25%, which was commendable, and we were able to grow our franchise across our areas of business globally across all of those four operating groups. Now, in terms of the geographic composition of income, last year we had 48% of our income come from North America, which is particularly large, and that was because of a couple of things. We had a very large realization of a renewable asset in our Green Investment Group in the Americas. That was a solar development platform that we've been building. We also had a very strong environment for gas and power in our Commodities and Global Markets business, where they were really having to step up to respond to customer need there.
Typically, we're generating about 30% of our income now from the Americas, 30% from the Europe, Middle East and Africa, 30% from Australia, and the remaining roughly 10% from Asia. As time goes on, we expect the percentage contribution from Australia to reduce, even though it'll grow in absolute terms, because these other global markets are much bigger markets that we're responding to. Now, looking at each of our four operating groups and how they contributed last financial year. First of all, starting with Macquarie Asset Management. That business, you can see in the circle at the bottom left there, contributed 23% of our income, and it was up 4% on the prior year. The reason partly that increase was not massive was because we took integration costs on the acquisition of a U.S. fixed income equities manager that we bought that year.
That business comprises the private markets, infrastructure, real estate, private credit, agriculture business, as well as the public investments, which is fixed income and equities asset management. You can see the support investors had for both of those lines of business in that the new funds we raised, it was AUD 27 billion of equity raised in the private markets business and AUD 10.5 billion of net inflows in the public investments. Both those franchises having strong support from the investors whose money we manage, ongoing support. The second of our annuity style businesses, as we call them, is our banking and financial services business. This is the only one of our four groups that operates just in Australia, which is where our focus is in this business.
That contributed 11%, as you see in that circle at the bottom left, to our earnings. It was up 30% over this last year. You may be familiar with the fact that, you know, we have a very customer-focused digital banking offering, and that's driving very good growth in volumes for us. Our home loans were up 34% last year to AUD 89.5 billion. Our business banking, which focuses on the small medium enterprise, professional services sectors, was up 13% to AUD 11.5 billion. We also grew our deposits by 21% to support growth in those loan books, and our funds on platform were up 17%, while our car loan portfolio was down as we streamlined down that portfolio.
Turning to our market-facing businesses, Commodities and Global Markets, 41% of our earnings came from that business, as you see in the circle at the bottom left. It was our largest contributor last year, and as I said, the market-facing businesses enjoyed a very good environment last year. The result was up 50% and all three of the divisions in that business had good results. The Commodities business, particularly, as I said, we had to step up to support client activity in volatile markets, and we had good results across agriculture, resources, gas and power, oil. Our financial markets business had increased client activity and improved results. There we are active in foreign exchange, in interest rates, in credit, equity derivatives and futures. Then lastly, the asset leasing business where we lease things like telecommunications equipment, smart meters.
That business had a 2% growth in its book to AUD 6 billion, and we had a large one-off contribution from selling our U.K. industrial and commercial meter portfolio. Macquarie Capital, our other market-facing business, stepped up to contribute 25% of our earnings last year. It was up 269%, reflecting the environment we had and the opportunities we were able to respond to. All parts of that business increased earnings. The fee revenue from mergers and acquisitions advice, equity capital markets and debt capital markets work was up. We also from our investment realizations had a step up both in equity realizations, but also we were able to grow our credit book where we're investing in private credit.
Increased contribution, and we ended up with AUD 15 billion of investments in that business, of which AUD 13 billion are in private credit. Now, not only did the businesses deliver good earnings, but they delivered good returns on the equity they were using. You can see on this slide we've got the 15-year average of what each of those two groups of businesses delivered and this year's one. The annuity style businesses, which are not as capital intensive, particularly in the asset management, have been delivering 22% return on equity over the last 15 years and 21 in this last year. The market-facing businesses also delivering over the last 15 years, a good 16% return on equity as averaged. This year stepped up to 30%.
After taking it into account the material surplus capital or equity position we hold, the net return was 18.7%, as I said. Speaking of that large surplus capital we hold, you can see on this slide we have AUD 10.7 billion or had AUD 10.7 billion of surplus capital at the end of last financial year and an 11.5% CET1 ratio in the bank. We also have strong credit ratings with the three global rating agencies, and you can see that our term funding comfortably exceeds our term assets. We are always making sure that we're well long-term funded. Now that's a summary of last year's result. I'll now turn to the result we just delivered for the most recent first quarter of this financial year.
Looking at it, first of all across the two groups of businesses, we had all up across the business, a result that was up on the prior comparable period, the first quarter of last financial year, and that was because we had favorable trading conditions overall. The annuity style businesses were actually significantly up on the prior comparable period, and that was mostly because in our asset management business, Macquarie Asset Management, we've moved our renewable investing, our Green Investment Group over there, and it had strong realizations in this first quarter. So that partially offset the strong results we had from Macquarie Infrastructure Corporation in that business in the previous quarter. The Banking and Financial Services business delivered a result that was broadly in line with the prior comparable quarter. Turning to the market-facing businesses.
The market-facing businesses were slightly up on the prior comparable quarter. The main principal contributor to that was in our commodities platform, where we had a better result after taking into account the impact of timing of income recognition on our gas and storage, gas transport and storage contracts. Also in Macquarie Capital, we had higher investment-related income in this most recent quarter. The result from the market-facing businesses was partially offset in terms of the relative movement by the fact that last year first quarter, we had that U.K. industrial and commercial meter leasing realization in Commodities and Global Markets. Now, looking in a little bit more detail of each of the four operating groups. The Asset Management Group contributed 32% over this first quarter.
The main thing I'd note there is that investors continue to support us with a commendable AUD 12.1 billion of equity raised in the last quarter for our funds in that area, infrastructure funds, real estate, private credit, agriculture, and an aircraft financing business that we have there. In the public investments area, you will have seen that equity markets are off quite a lot, so unfavorable market movements brought down our assets under management, but that was offset by foreign exchange. We ended up basically broadly in line with our assets under management in that business. The banking and financial services business contributed 11% of our income in this first quarter, and the momentum we've seen in the growth of volume of loans and deposits and funds on platform continued.
The home loan portfolio was up 8%. The business banking portfolio was up 3%, supported by a deposit growth of 9%, where we're at over AUD 106 billion of deposits now. Our funds on platform were down. Even though we had strong inflows, it's because of the market value of those assets falling and our car loan portfolio, we continued to streamline. Looking at our two market-facing businesses. In our Commodities and Global Markets, they again contributed 41% of our result in this first quarter, and they continued to experience elevated volatility across a range of commodities globally. That meant there was extra need to support customers, extra client activity, extra hedging and trading activity. We had a strong result across that business.
We also had strong client activity in our financial markets offering, and we had a consistent portfolio in our asset finance in that business. In Macquarie Capital, we also had good fee revenue. It was up on the prior comparable period in terms of mergers and acquisition advice, fees, debt capital markets. Equity capital markets decreased somewhat. I would note that the value of transactions on which we advise the completed transactions is actually down, and that is basically because we're seeing market activity soften, as we said. We also managed to have reasonable realizations of assets in this period, as I mentioned, and we managed to continue growing our book in terms of investments in Macquarie Capital.
We managed to put another AUD 2.6 billion to work over this quarter, and we have about AUD 17 billion of investments now, of which about AUD 14 billion are in private credit. Now, also, not just good results in that first quarter from our operating businesses, but our funding and capital position remains conservative and strong. We have continue to have our term funding exceeding our term assets. Our customer deposits in total grew to over AUD 110 billion, and we issued AUD 7 billion of term funding in that period in terms of our debt funding. Our capital position, as I mentioned, was AUD 10.7 billion at the end of last financial year. It's still at a strong AUD 10.1 billion at the end of the first quarter.
The main factors impacting that are we paid a dividend, of course, since the end of last year, and we had a dividend reinvestment plan slightly offsetting that, and then our businesses absorbed some capital. You'll see here where that capital was absorbed in this last quarter. The main drivers, as you can see on this slide, were that, in Macquarie Asset Management, we continued to have underwriting activity as we support that business with our balance sheet to grow its franchise, seed assets for new funds, et cetera. In the Banking and Financial Services business, as I said, our loan volumes were growing, our funds on platform were growing. So, as we slightly ran off the vehicle financings, so that absorbed balance sheet and capital.
Macquarie Capital, as I said, we grew our principal lending book in equities and the lending book as well. Now, in terms of our capital position, a couple of other things I should mention on this page that impacted our capital. As I said, we, the board, applied a 1.5% discount in their determination to our dividend reinvestment plan, and that resulted in AUD 485 million of new equity being issued. Offsetting that, there was a AUD 923 million amount in purchasing MEREP shares for the staff equity, the way we pay staff for our compensation in equity. We issued Tier 1 and Tier 2 capital.
There were two Tier 2 issuances of AUD 500 million and AUD 350 million, and a Tier 1 issuance of AUD 750 million as well. The last thing I wanted to touch on in reflecting on this quarter is our regulatory position. Our regulatory ratios still remain comfortably above the APRA Basel III minimums, and there were a number of regulatory developments in this last quarter. Glenn mentioned the CPS 511 remuneration standard, the Prudential Standard on Remuneration. I would also note in the second bullet point that at the end of November last year, APRA released their new bank capital framework, which is also known as Unquestionably Strong, UQS. We noted that as at the end of March 2022, that would have had a AUD 2.3 billion reduction in our capital surplus.
This comes into account as of first of January 2023, and we've provided for this capital already. With that, I'll turn now to the outlook before handing back to Glenn. As usual, with our outlook, we look at this by each of our four operating groups. Starting with Macquarie Asset Management, we expect the base fees in that business now to be broadly in line with last financial year. That's because we expect that the continuing deployment in our private markets, our real assets business and the benefits we got from the acquisition we did in the public investments last year will be offset by the unfavorable market movements that we're now seeing. Our net other operating income in that group, we also expect to be down given the strong contribution we had last year from Macquarie Infrastructure Corporation.
I mentioned we've moved the Green Investment Group now to the asset manager to offer it as a fiduciary offering going forward. We continue to have a balance sheet there that we realize. We expect those results to be significantly down on last financial year, because I mentioned we had that big realization of our U.S. renewable portfolio in that business last year. A strong result last year. Turning to our Australian-only Banking and Financial Services business, we are seeing ongoing growth in volumes in our loan portfolios, in our deposits, and our funds on platform in that business. We expect some competitive dynamics to continue to drive margin pressure in that business. We also expect to keep investing in growing that business.
Our expenses going up as we invest in a range of things like the volume growth, the technology investments we're making, and the regulatory requirements. We also will have to monitor ongoing potential expected credit loss provisioning as the year progresses in that business. Turning to market-facing businesses, Macquarie Capital, we have guided that we expect transaction activity to be substantially down on last financial year, given the market conditions we see have been weakening during the first quarter compared to what we saw in the prior period. We also expect our investment-related income to be up because of the good realizations we've been experiencing year to date and the ongoing growth that we have in our private credit business there, our principal finance lending business.
The asset realization income, we expect, to have fewer notable, major realizations during this financial year. We're continuing to deploy capital in this environment that we're seeing in that business. The last of the four operating groups, the Commodities and Global Markets business, we expect our commodities income to be down compared to last financial year after taking into account the impact of timing of income, recognition in our gas transport and storage contracts. That's of course subject to ongoing volatility that we may see in commodity markets during this year. The financial markets business and the asset finance business in that group, we expect to deliver a consistent contribution with continued deployment of balance sheet in the asset finance area.
Lastly, at the corporate level, we expect things like our compensation ratio and our tax rate to be in line with historical ranges. Now, that short-term outlook is of course subject to a number of factors, particularly in the current environment, market conditions and significant volatility events, global inflation and interest rates and the impact of geopolitical events, and also the completion of period end reviews and completion rate of transactions, the geographic composition of income and the impact of foreign exchange, and potential tax or regulatory changes and tax uncertainties. Given that, we continue to maintain a cautious stance with a conservative approach to all of capital funding and liquidity that should position us well to respond in the current environment.
Lastly, looking at the medium-term outlook, we continue to believe we are well-positioned for the medium term, given the diverse areas of business we have by not just product and sector, but geography as well. That is supported by our ongoing programs to identify cost savings, and efficiency, our ongoing investment in technology, and the strong and conservative balance sheet we've maintained throughout, as well as our proven risk management framework and culture. With that, I will hand back to Glenn to take you through the formal part of business for the meeting. Thank you.
Thank you, Shemara. We turn now to the formal items of business for the meeting. The notice of meeting and accompanying explanatory notes have been sent to shareholders. I propose to take those as read. The items of business are as shown on the next slide. Item one is to consider the annual accounts and financial statements, and I now lay before the meeting the financial report, the director's report, and the auditor's report of Macquarie for the financial year ended 31st March 2022. Please note that there's no formal resolution relating to the financial statements. Items 2A and 2B are the re-elections of Jillian Broadbent and Philip Coffey as voting directors. Item 2C is the election of Michelle Hinchliffe as a voting director. Each director will address the meeting before we break for refreshments.
Item three is the annual non-binding vote on the remuneration report, which you can find on pages 94 to 142 of the annual report. In the explanatory notes to the notice of meeting of a letter from the chair of the Board Remuneration Committee and an analysis that compares performance and executive remuneration measures for fiscal years 2021 and 2022. Our remuneration framework, of course, is long-standing, and it supports our principles by motivating staff to build businesses and to be accountable for their decisions, their behavior, and their associated risk management, as well as customer and reputational outcomes. As I said before, the board undertook over the past year a detailed review of the framework in the light of APRA's CPS 511 standard and the expectations of stakeholders.
The board approved a number of changes to be implemented, and that's all disclosed, as I said, in the annual report. Overall, we've received consistently positive feedback about our approach to remuneration and our framework, and we believe it's been a key driver of Macquarie's success as an international organization for five decades. Item four on the agenda is to approve the Managing Director's annual participation in the Macquarie Group Employee Retained Equity Plan or MEREP. They're the items for the agenda. I'm going to ask now that we hear from those seeking re-election and election today. Item 2-A is the re-election of sir?
When they stand for election, is it possible for the shareholders here in the room to ask a couple of brief questions during the proceedings for election?
It may be in order for there to be one or two questions, if shareholders see fit. Moving along, item 2-A is the re-election of Jillian Broadbent , who's been an independent non-executive director of Macquarie since November 2018. Jillian is the chair of the Board Remuneration Committee and a member of the Board Nominating Committee. Her extensive experience in investment banking, financial markets, and her lengthy experience as a director of major institutions across a range of industries greatly enhances the board's financial and investment banking acumen and its ability to govern the company appropriately. Accordingly, the board has no reservations regarding Jillian's ability fully to discharge her duties as one of your directors. I take pleasure in asking Jillian now to address the meeting. Thank you, Jillian.
Thank you, Glenn. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm pleased to offer myself for re-election to your board at the annual general meeting. As Glenn mentioned, I have been a member of the board since November 2018, and I chair the Board Remuneration Committee and a member of the Board Nominating Committee. I believe that I bring to Macquarie board extensive investment banking industry knowledge and markets expertise, as well as considerable executive management and Australian-listed company board experience. I spent 22 years at Bankers Trust Australia until 1998, initially as the economic strategist and then as executive director responsible for risk management and derivatives in foreign exchange, interest rates, and commodities.
I was a member of the board of the Reserve Bank of Australia between 1998 and 2013, and I previously served as the inaugural chair of the board of the government's Clean Energy Finance Corporation. I have also been a director of the ASX Limited, Coca-Cola Amatil, Woodside Petroleum, Qantas, Woolworths Group, and Westfield Management Limited. In the insurance industry, I served as the chair of the board of Swiss Re Life & Health Australia and the National Portrait Gallery of Australia Foundation. These experiences have served me well for my participation in this board. As chair of the Board Remuneration Committee, during the past year, I have overseen the review of Macquarie's remuneration framework. This has required taking into consideration a range of stakeholder perspectives, including those of shareholders and regulators, as well as the requirements of APRA's new Prudential Standard CPS 511.
We have consequently fine-tuned our remuneration approach, the details of which are set out in our remuneration report. It has been a privilege to serve on the Macquarie board and to be here seeking re-election as a director. I hope to continue utilizing my wide experience, knowledge, and expertise to make valuable contributions to your board and would greatly appreciate your support for my re-election. Thank you. Oh, I'll just stay here in case someone has questions.
No, you don't. Thank you very much, Jillian. I'm gonna take the questions as a group later on, sir, if you don't mind, during the Q and A session. I think that'd be best to collect them and n ow?
I think we'll take them after the break, but you're welcome to ask people in person, of course, as well during the break if you'd like to do that. The next item of business is the election of Philip Coffey, or the re-election, I should say, of Philip Coffey. Philip's been an Independent Director since August of 2018. He's chair now of the Board Risk Committee and a member of the Board Governance and Compliance Committee and the Board Nominating Committee. Philip has substantial experience both in Australia and overseas in banking, financial services and financial markets, and that materially adds to the expertise that we have on the board and our capacity to oversee the company.
The board has no reservations regarding Philip's ability fully to discharge his duties as one of your directors, and I now invite Philip to address the meeting. Thank you. Thanks, Philip.
Thanks, Glenn, and good morning, everyone. My past three years as a director of the Macquarie Group has been challenging but also fulfilling. Over that time, I believe your company has performed exceptionally well in navigating the uncertainties and market volatility from COVID, energy disruption and geopolitical tension. More recently, the re-emergence of inflation and central bank responses has added to this uncertainty. At the same time, new ways of working have evolved with technological and cultural implications. For my part, I've endeavored to add value on the Remuneration, Audit and Risk Committees and, most recently, the Governance and Compliance Committee, as well as the main boards in our governance roles during this turbulent period. In particular, to review the operational risks inherent in this business environment.
Regulatory matters have been at the forefront as, quite rightly, our key stakeholders have looked to assure themselves on our controls and the management of our risks. As well, uncertainty and volatility has also given rise to higher transactional volumes and activity in line with the increased opportunities to support customers and successfully pursue market opportunities. In both areas, I've looked to use my experience in markets trading businesses, in bank balance sheet management and investment management to constructively engage with our key executives and to test and check their thinking and approaches to important issues. To emphasize the appropriate focus and allocation of resources for controlled risk management of our business activities. I've been fortunate, or unfortunate as the case may be, in my career to operate and manage through economic and monetary cycles and seen the consequential gyrations in markets and sectors in the economies.
Banks, investors, corporate and retail clients all look to adapt and manage their risks, and I've focused on using this experience to support the board oversight of our team's activities and responses over this time. At the same time, this operating environment has placed increased pressure and demands on our people, and I've been keen to use the lessons learned from my own time as an executive to support our managers and be attuned to the responses we see. I've been consistently impressed with the speed with which management has responded to changed circumstances and the thoughtful plans put into action. Our responses were not always perfect, and hindsight's a wonderful thing, but I believe that was not from a lack of thoughtful consideration and analysis and, in many cases, stress testing and scenario modeling and their processes that the board tests and oversees.
This highly uncertain business environment looks set to continue for the foreseeable future, giving rise to ongoing needs and opportunities to support our customers, sometimes in new and changed ways. With your support, I aim to continue to represent you on the board and committees with a focus on the important issues, to complement my fellow directors, using my relevant skills and experiences, and to support the achievement of the optimal balance of risk, growth and return. Thank you.
Thank you, Philip. Agenda item 2C is the election of Michelle Hinchliffe , who, having been appointed by the Board as an independent director on the 1st of March this year, offers herself for election. The Board will benefit and indeed already has benefited from Michelle's extensive experience in the financial services sector, particularly her experience with internal and external audit of global banks, financial and regulatory reporting requirements and risk management. Since her appointment, Michelle has been a member of the Board Nominating and Audit Committees. If elected today by shareholders, Michelle will succeed Michael Coleman as Chair of the Board Audit Committee and also become a member of the Board Governance and Compliance Committee at the conclusion of today's meeting.
The board has no reservations regarding Michelle's ability to fully discharge her duties as one of your directors, and I now invite her to address the meeting. Thank you, Michelle.
Thank you, Glenn, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's an honor to be speaking to the shareholders today in support of my election as a director of Macquarie Group. My background is in the financial services sector. I'm a qualified chartered accountant, and I was a partner at KPMG in the financial services division for over 25 years, both here in Australia and also in the United Kingdom. In my time there, I led global teams in the provision of external audit, internal audit, and advisory services to clients right across financial services sector, including a number of global banking institutions. I also served on the board of KPMG Australia and KPMG in the U.K. Earlier this year, I also became a non-executive director of BHP Group.
As Glenn mentioned, I'm a member of Macquarie's audit committee and board nominating committee, and if elected by shareholders today, I will succeed Michael Coleman as chair of the audit committee. I'll also become a member of the board governance and compliance committee at the conclusion of this meeting. I believe my extensive knowledge and expertise in the financial sector, particularly in accounting and reporting and financial risk management, as well as my international experience, complement the skill sets of my fellow board members. As a director of Macquarie, I'm confident I'll have sufficient time and commitment to serve the company and you, our shareholders. Thank you for your support.
Thank you, Michelle. To allow everyone attending an opportunity to vote, I now open the polls in respect of all the motions on which shareholders will vote today. The polls will remain open until just before I close the meeting. Shareholders and proxy holders participating online can cast a direct vote by clicking on the bar chart icon. Select the option corresponding with the way you wish to vote. Once the option's been selected, the vote you selected will change color, and a confirmation message will appear. There's no need to press submit or send. Your vote is automatically counted. To change your vote, simply select another option to override. Votes can be changed until we close the polls towards the end of the meeting. Shareholders and proxy holders attending in person have been issued with a handset at registration. This handset allows eligible attendees to cast their vote.
To do that, use the scroll wheel to highlight the resolution that you want to vote on, then press the green square button. Once you've confirmed the resolution, press the green button again to see the voting options. If you wanna vote yes, press one. If you wanna vote against, press two. To abstain, press three. Press the green button again to move on to the next resolution, or press the red button to go back to the full list of resolutions. You can change your vote by selecting another option to override your previous votes, and your votes can be changed at any time until we close the polls. Those instructions sounded pretty complicated, but there are representatives from our registry here who are available to assist if you have any questions about how to use the handset.
Proxy holders with directed votes will have those votes automatically voted as directed. All open votes will be voted according to the option you select on Lumi or on your handset. I'm now going to adjourn the meeting to allow those attending in person to have a break for refreshments. Sir, you're welcome to ask those questions of the directors in person if you have time to stay. We'll reconvene in about half an hour. If you have a handset and you don't intend to return, could you please return it to the people at the registration desk? For those online, a notification will appear on your screen prior to us restarting. Thank you, and now we'll adjourn for a break. Thanks so much.
Attention everyone. The AGM will recommence very soon. We ask you to make your way inside and take your seats. Thank you.
Attention everyone. The AGM will recommence very soon. Would you kindly make your way back into the ballroom and take your seats? Thank you.
The last year has been one without parallel in European energy markets. Prices soared to record highs as swings in demand and supply created extreme volatility. If we look back to the summer of 2021, Europe entered the winter period with their lowest gas storage inventories in more than a decade. There were three main reasons for this. First, there was high demand for gas at the start of the summer due to unusually cold temperatures in Europe for that time of year. Second, there were fewer LNG cargoes available for Europe due to higher than expected Asian demand. Third, Russian supplies, which make up around a third of total European supply, were particularly low, mostly due to geopolitical restrictions even before the invasion of Ukraine. With storage levels so low, there was a genuine risk that Europe would not have enough gas to get through the winter.
Fortunately, the low Russian supply was partly offset by strong supply from other countries such as Norway, Algeria and Azerbaijan. While some cargoes were diverted back from Asia into Europe as the situation developed. This, coupled with above seasonal temperatures in Europe during the winter, meant that Europe got through the winter relatively unscathed, with storage broadly in line with the 2021 levels. Despite this, prices remained elevated and volatile due to ongoing geopolitical tensions, with the risk of a cut to gas supplies adding to the nervousness in the market. This resulted in the Title Transfer Facility, or TTF day ahead price, reaching a high of EUR 209 per megawatt hour on the 9th of March, which was 12 times higher than the TTF price on the same day in 2021. Against this challenging backdrop, our team supported clients in navigating extreme volatility.
This unprecedented volatility led to increased demand for risk management, market access and financing solutions from our clients who produce, transport, supply or consume gas or power in Europe. The environment also led to a significant increase in credit and funding requirements for our business, which meant working closely with Group Treasury and RMG Credit. Throughout this period, we continued to help clients manage their exposures in a volatile price environment. For example, we helped a renewable energy producer hedge their wind and solar production in the U.K., Scandinavia, Spain, France and Italy. We also provided access to a large industrial company involved in the agricultural supply chain, enabling them to hedge gas and electricity prices in countries across Europe and save close to EUR 300 million on their energy costs in FY 2022.
The close working relationship between the business and multiple stakeholders allowed for effective decision making and underpinned our ability to stand alongside our clients during extremely turbulent market conditions. It took a monumental effort from colleagues across Macquarie to support clients during this time, including RMG, FMG, Legal, MOD, IT and numerous others. This collaboration has resulted in not only a strong outcome for CGM, but more importantly, we're proud to have been a trusted partner to clients and to help support the communities they serve during this period of volatility.
I'm pleased to share how Macquarie Capital in the Americas is innovating to remain at the forefront of emerging thematics and working together across business to support our clients in realizing their ambitions. In Macquarie Capital, we focus on industry niches and then seek to deliver solutions to our clients, whether advisory, capital markets, principal investing, or a combination of all. Aerospace, defense, and government services is the sector we committed to in 2016, and since then have grown significantly. We recognize the trend toward U.S. government agencies embracing technology and outsourcing to modernize their ways of working the services they provide to constituents while meeting the increasing complexity of their mission. Enlisting the help of companies that were maximizing smart technology-enabled agencies to improve productivity and outcomes.
The following year, we identified an opportunity to invest in a company at the forefront of this trend, Dovel Technologies, a leading expert to federal agencies that blend deep domain expertise and advanced technologies in health IT, life sciences, and grants management. Its life sciences team has scientists and computational biologists working in 30 government labs on cures for infectious diseases like HIV, TB, malaria, hepatitis, and Ebola. Dovel has enjoyed impressive growth and was ready to take its next step with an experienced investment partner. With the assistance of legal and other support teams, we worked to acquire Dovel and set on executing a value-added playbook for growth. This included bringing in new executive talent, rebuilding the business development function, and focusing on profitability to increase margins.
We also supported management in exploring acquisitions that could expand Dovel's position as a pure play health IT business, and later that year made a follow-on investment to acquire IT modernization company, AceInfo Solutions. The acquisition of AceInfo added breadth and depth to Dovel's offering, strengthening its key capabilities and expanding its footprint across the U.S.
After more than two years of us working to advance Dovel's growth trajectory, which saw it named the top growth company in numerous rankings and named the top workplace by its employees, Dovel was well-positioned for sale. We reached an agreement in September last year to sell Dovel to Guidehouse, a strategic acquirer in the government services sector controlled by PE firm Veritas, a significant client of Macquarie Capital. As it turns out, we were also invited into the financing of Guidehouse and continue to support them as they take their business forward. We're proud to have been part of the Dovel story and to position the company and its team for future success. While our time with Dovel might have come to an end, our work to leverage our deep expertise across the aerospace, defense, and government services sector is far from over.
We've made five investments in government technology and services companies over the past three years, including acquiring majority stake in Procentrix in October, which is a low-code, no-code technology company serving the U.S. government with a federal civilian focus. We plan to execute on a similar value-added playbook with Procentrix that we followed with Dovel.
Welcome back, everybody, and I now would like to reconvene the meeting and continue with the formal business. Please be reminded that the polls remain open. Let's now move to take questions and comments. It's my duty, of course, to ensure that everybody gets a chance to speak, to comment about the management of the company, the remuneration report or other items of business before the meeting today. To achieve that, we've adopted some procedures on the meeting which are set out on the slide. We're committed to ensuring that people attending the meeting feel respected at all times, including ensuring that the meeting is conducted in an orderly fashion. People who've come today want to discuss matters of interest to shareholders as a whole, and that's what we're seeking to achieve.
Those participating online, you can submit a written question or a comment through the Lumi platform at any time during the meeting until the end of the Q and A session. To do that, select the messaging icon that looks like a speech bubble on your screen, compose your comment, and you may submit more than one question and you'll receive a confirmation that the question's been submitted. As I said earlier, we may amalgamate or moderate some questions if there are multiple questions on the same topic. We'll also respond to questions from those participating online who'd like to ask an audible question. To do that, on the welcome page, click on the asking audio questions button. You'll be asked to pause your webcast and then be redirected to an audio-only environment. Please wait to be asked or to be called to ask your question.
Shareholders who are in the room, who wish to address the meeting can do so by pressing the microphone button on the handset you have, followed by the green square button. When you reach the front of the queue, we'll call your name to address the meeting. You can leave the queue if you wish to at any time by pressing the microphone button and then the green square button. We're gonna start with questions submitted in advance and then take turns through written questions submitted online during the meeting, questions from people here in the room and audio questions. You're welcome to ask two questions at a time. If you ask more than two, then we'll come back to you. We'll give other shareholders and proxy holders an opportunity to ask questions before returning to members who've got more than two questions.
Following feedback we've had at previous AGMs, in order to address as broad a range of topics as we can, we might defer to later in the meeting certain questions on particular topics if there's already been a number of questions on that topic. If you have an individual customer issue or other issues that aren't really related to today's items of business, our investor relations people are here, and they'd be happy to take your query. You can email them if you wish at macquarie.shareholders@macquarie.com or see somebody at the shareholder table outside. I'd note that Kristin Stubbins , the external auditor from PwC is here today. She's available to respond to any questions on the conduct of the audit, the preparation of the auditor's report, accounting policies in relation to preparation of the financial statements or auditor independence.
Kristin is here to answer those things. We've received a written question to the auditor ahead of the meeting, and we'll ask Kristin to address that question shortly. I'm now gonna take questions that were submitted in advance. Could we have the first question, please?
Chair, our first question comes from Camilla Cable. The question is: How is Macquarie placed to weather the economic downturn?
I think the company's well-placed. As Shemara was saying earlier, it's a diverse business. That gives us some strength through adverse times in particular sectors of the economy. We've tried to structure the business so as to be resilient to more difficult times, which I think the world economy does face. We think we're well-placed, and we're well-placed to deliver superior performance in the medium term. I don't know if, Shemara, you'd like to add anything, but please do if you would.
No. Thanks, Chair. And I and Glenn, I think that covers it all. Thanks.
All right. Thank you for the question. Next question, please.
Chair, our next question is from Tammy Chan. The question is: How are Macquarie's investments going, and how can shareholders be assured that they are all above board?
Well, I think I could probably get Shemara to talk about broadly about the investments, of which there are many. The board is confident that that all the investments we make are above board. There's an extensive diligence process that is gone through when making these particular investments, so we're very confident of that. I'll refer to Shemara on performance in general, if you don't mind. Thanks.
Thanks, Glenn. I confirm, Ms. Chan, that we have investments, as Glenn said, across a very broad range of areas where we have deep expertise to deliver to where we identify unmet community need, whether it's in our asset management areas, in our investment bank areas, in our commodities business or banking and financial services. The first thing is that we rely on the people that are the investors to be identifying all the risks, and risk management lies with the first line as a responsibility. We have a very strong second line in terms of assessing the risks of those investments. We look at, you know, the financial risks in terms of credit and market risk, as well as non-financial risks like compliance, operational risk, behavioral risk, regulatory risk, et cetera.
We also have our finance team look at financial risk from a reporting and accounting perspective. We have our corporate operations look at technology risk, HR risks, et cetera. We also have our legal team look at risks. We have a pretty rigorous process, and I think we've had a good track record across our 53 years of principal investing and supporting our businesses with investment. I think that's how we basically assure shareholders that we invest well in terms of your money.
Thank you. Could we have the next question, please?
Chair, the next question is from Stephen Mayne. The question is: Please outline the selection process for recent chair succession. Were external candidates considered? Was any outside firm involved in the selection process? Were there multiple candidates? What was the voting process?
Thanks, Stephen, for the question. As you will appreciate, it's a little awkward for me to answer that. I think I might ask the company secretary, who was the secretary to all that process, to go through that. Thanks. Dennis?
Thank you, Chair. The board undertook a comprehensive and rigorous process led by Peter Warne, the retiring chair. The process included discussions with each of the board members and some members of senior management. The discussions were followed by a meeting of the board nominating committee and then by a meeting of the board, at which there was clear consensus that Glenn Stevens was the best placed person to chair the board going forwards. That was due, firstly, to his extensive financial markets and senior leadership background and experience, including his time as Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia. Secondly, the board's positive experience and respect for him gained from his period as chair of the Board Risk Committee from late 2019 to early 2020, when all the board members attended each of the committee meetings.
Thanks, Dennis. I hope that covers that. Can we have the next question, please?
Chair, the next question is from Stephen Mayne. The question is: PwC has been paid more than AUD 1 billion by various Macquarie-owned or Macquarie-managed entities since the business floated in 1996, including the AUD 71.7 million in 2021 to 2022 disclosed on page 265 of the latest annual report. Can the signing PwC audit partner, Kristin Stubbins, name a bigger or more important client than Macquarie for PwC anywhere in the world?
Well, Kristin, I'll invite you to address that question. Thank you.
Thank you, Stephen, for the question. Good morning, shareholders. Macquarie is a very large and important client for PwC. Macquarie is an international group, complex, as I said. It's a complex international company. We've got audit teams in over 40 countries working on the audit. PwC is also a very large global professional services company or firm. We do have a number of large clients, and some of which are actually larger than Macquarie. For example, we're the auditors of Goldman Sachs internationally, JP Morgan and HSBC.
What I wanted to say to shareholders is that you can be reassured that I take this role very seriously, and my role as independent auditor is very dear to me. I engage with my global colleagues regularly to make sure we are bringing the best of that international expertise, looking at global trends in the auditing and accounting profession, as well as the macro trends to make sure we're doing the best for shareholders. Thank you.
Next question, please.
Chair, our next question is from Stephen Mayne. The question is: In what year was PwC first appointed auditor for Macquarie Bank, and how many times has the audit job been tendered since? When is it next due to be tendered?
PwC has been the auditor of Macquarie for quite a long time, but it's worth saying that we do review the performance of the auditor annually. There is a change of signing partner every five years, as is appropriate under the standards and the regulations in Australia. This year, the Board Audit Committee has decided to implement a more detailed comprehensive review of the external auditor beginning in 2024. We think that strengthens the governance framework for the audit process and helps us adequately manage the risks relating to independence and effectiveness. I think that's probably all I can say on that question today. Next question, please.
Chair, our next question is from Stephen Mayne: Regarding the reduction of the deferred bonus scheme from seven years to five years, has that been supported by all of the proxy advisors? Is the reality of this move that Macquarie was struggling to attract and retain talent relative to what other competitors offer in the market?
Well, broadly, we've had support from proxy advisors and institutional shareholders for the changes that we've made that will come into effect in the next year, the ones that I described earlier. It's true there are shorter vesting periods for execs while they're employed with Macquarie, but offsetting that, the vesting periods for their post-retirement vesting have been lengthened. Taking all that together, we believe that the vesting periods are actually still quite long by most standards. They certainly more than comply with APRA's new requirements under CPS 511, and we think that the executives are still highly aligned with shareholders. As far as retention and recruiting, it certainly is a challenge, but the changes we've made here were not in some sense a knee-jerk response to that.
These were very deliberately thought out, in light of not only market conditions but also forthcoming regulatory changes. Next question, please.
Chair, the next question is from Andrew Wood. The question is: How do current HR strategy, policies, and processes support diversity, inclusiveness, and equality? Where is it explicitly mentioned, and where is it implicit? What kind of training does Macquarie offer its staff in this space?
Thank you for the question. I mentioned diversity, equity, and inclusion in my opening address and indicated there how important we think it is. The board does spend time on indicators of diversity, equity, and inclusion when we talk with the executive team. Those people are assessed on a range of indicators at their annual performance reviews, and among those indicators are indicators of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We're aiming to support our employees in that space at every stage of the employee life cycle. It might be good, I think, Nicole Sorbara, who's our Chief Operating Officer, I might ask you, Nicole, to perhaps say a little bit more about the various programs that we have in place. Thank you.
Thank you, Glenn, and good afternoon. In my role as COO, I look after HR. Our diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy is a strategy that has evolved over many years and continues to evolve. This year, we added a new pillar to the strategy and which was equity. Now, we hold all of our people managers and our leaders, our directors, accountable for driving an inclusive workplace, equitable opportunities for all of our people, including our underrepresented groups, and also a diverse workforce as well. Now, this is articulated in leadership standards that we have and also reinforced through leadership training, which goes throughout the entire organization. As Glenn mentioned in his opening address, we've rolled out this year for the first time inclusive leadership training. We've had over 1,600 directors attend that.
In Europe, they're also experimenting at the moment with training around the benefits of neurodiversity. We have very active employee network groups, and they aim to educate all of us about the various forms of diversity. Now, we also take a very data-driven approach in terms of how we measure our baseline and our progress. We have great data, and we know where to focus our efforts. From a recruitment perspective, at the junior levels, we are recruiting 50/50 male and female. We also ensure that in our recruitment shortlists, we have at the moment 81% of the shortlists are represented by females. Turnover, there is no difference between male and female turnover. We also have gender pay parity for like roles as well. There's a lot of work. We will never be done.
There's each year we enhance our strategy.
Thank you, Nicole. Could we have the next question, please?
Chair, that concludes our pre-received questions. We'll now move to questions that we've received via the online platform. Our next question is from Mr. David Philip Mayne . The question is: Where is the line drawn in terms of other board gigs Macquarie directors can take? For instance, former chair Kevin McCann crossed the line when he retired from Macquarie and then joined an Evans & Partners Advisory Committee directly competing with us. This could never have happened while he was serving. In terms of current directors, is it okay for Mike Roche to serve on the board of Six Park Asset Management? Doesn't it compete with us? And is it appropriate for Glenn Stevens to serve on the New South Wales Treasury Corporation board when it presumably pays Macquarie millions to help manage the New South Wales state debt?
We are a big global player in the oil and gas sector from a trading point of view, so is it appropriate for Nicola Wakefield-Evans to serve on the Viva Energy board, or do we only have a limited presence in the Australian market? Nicola is also on the Clean Energy Finance Corporation board. Given our push into renewables, is she going to retire from that position when her five-year term expires next week?
Well, I think what I'd say is that, the Macquarie directors, most company directors are on, more than one board. That's actually an advantage often because, in fact, usually because, they bring diverse experiences, from their other roles, and they see how companies address issues which are of common interest. I think that's actually a strength. The board has to devote significant time to, the Macquarie role. I can assure you, it's a demanding directorship in terms of time and effort. All external commitments that directors have are considered carefully at the time they take them on. They would usually consult with the chair before taking that on, and I'm quite comfortable with, the other roles that other directors have, on the other bodies they serve.
Where a potential conflict looks like it may emerge, we have strict processes in place to partition information and ensure that directors at Macquarie don't take part in a decision that we might be taking that has some bearing on another role they have, and that's been very well used and exercised over time. Australia is a small market, so it's inevitable that high-quality people are gonna be on more than one board. We take these issues of potential conflicts very seriously, and for my own part on the New South Wales Treasury Corporation board, I'm excluded from the decision Macquarie might take with relevance to T Corp and vice versa, where those things come up. I think that's quite well managed.
Could we have the next question, please?
Chair, our next question is from David Philip Main. Macquarie's staff share scheme is the second largest shareholder in the group behind BlackRock with 5.77%. At today's opening price, these staff shares are worth almost AUD 4 billion. Unlike the other Big Four banks, Macquarie has never done a pro rata capital raising. Indeed, the seven placement SPP raisings that Macquarie has done since 2006 is a record for an ASX 200 company, raising AUD 8.44 billion, comprising AUD 5.39 billion from institutional placements and AUD 3.05 billion. To your credit, you have never scaled back an SPP or even announced a cap or target when launching an offer.
However, it would be good if Macquarie joined the PAITREO Club as this is the fairest way to raise capital pro rata with retail rights, trading, and book builds to compensate all non-participating shareholders. Indeed, you're currently sharing in AUD 43 million of fees with UBS underwriting ANZ's AUD 3.5 billion PAITREO. When next raising capital, will you consider doing a PAITREO?
Well, thank you, Mr. Main, for the question and the extensive comment. I think in terms of the best way for the company to raise capital in market circumstances, I'm going to ask Alex to address that. If you would, please.
Thanks, Glenn. Thanks, Mr. Main, for the question, and good morning or good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I want to start. Obviously, we did undertake a AUD 2.8 billion capital raising in November this year, and I wanted to start by thanking shareholders for the support we received in that capital raising. We did a AUD 1.5 billion institutional placement followed by a AUD 1.3 billion raise via a share purchase plan. As Glenn said, I think when we are very conscious that when we embark on a capital raising, we wanna make sure that we embark on that in a manner that provides for the broadest possible participation by shareholders in that capital raising.
Recognizing also that we're balancing that against the cost, the complexity, and the certainty of outcome that's required in order to ensure the ongoing financial strength of the organization. We were very pleased, I think, with the capital raising that we undertook this year. Just for everyone's interest, in relation to the AUD 1.5 billion institutional component of the capital raising, it was actually the smallest discount to the closing price that has ever been recorded in the Australian market for a raising of that size. Very pleased with that. Over 90% of that went to our existing shareholder base. In relation to the SPP, as you said, Mr. Main, obviously, we took all of the subscriptions to that SPP, raised AUD 1.3 billion.
Again, I was very pleased to see that nearly 50,000 of our shareholders actually participated in that in that SPP. Of course, at the time of the issue, the stock was trading at quite a significant premium to the price at which retail shareholders participated in the issue. It was a we think a very good transaction, and we had very broad participation from the from the shareholder base. I think as we go forward and reflecting on the on the past, obviously you can be assured that when we talk as the as the management team and the discussion with the board, there is very detailed consideration given to alternative options to actually raise that capital.
Again, what we're trying to do is make sure there's the broadest possible participation, but also make sure that we achieve our outcome with a level of certainty. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Alex. Could we have the next question, please?
Chair, the next question is from Mr. David Philip Main. The question is: When the chairman retired as RBA governor in 2016, our central bank was not into money printing in a serious way, not even during the GFC. Can you believe that six years later, the RBA has printed almost AUD 300 billion, of which AUD 11.3 billion was given to Macquarie, the first public company to be chaired by a former RBA governor as a virtually interest-free loan that doesn't have to be fully repaid until mid-2024? Our company, which pays the chair around AUD 900,000 a year in fees, is directly benefiting from central bank money printing. Are you okay with that? Do you think modern monetary theory is now a credible policy?
Also, are we still only paying 0.1% to the RBA, or does the interest rate rise with the official cash rate? Have we given any thought to repaying this RBA loan early, given the optics and our remarkably strong capital position with cash liquidity exceeding AUD 50 billion?
Okay, there's quite a few questions in there. Let me see if I can collect them. I'm gonna ask Alex in a moment to talk about funding costs through that source of funding and what we can say about the future. On the broader issue that you raise, let's be clear, it's nearly six years now since I left the Reserve Bank. The TFF was put in place by the governor and the board at the appropriate time in their judgment to provide low-cost funding for banks in order to support the economy through the pandemic. It's true that Macquarie accessed that funding, but it did so on the same terms as every other bank. If there's any suggestion that somehow I had some untoward influence over the creation of that facility, well, that's not true.
I learned about it by reading about it in the paper, like everybody else. Macquarie accessed it on the same terms as every other bank. As for repayment schedules and whether costs will rise, Alex, perhaps you could take that up.
Thanks, Glenn. I think you covered it well. Maybe just to reiterate the background. Obviously, the time we're talking about March of 2020, we're obviously just heading into COVID. The RBA in their wisdom extended the credit facility to make sure that interest rates to borrowers in the market came down. Also, authorized deposit taking institutions were given an incentive to extend credit to the small and medium enterprises across the economy. As Mr. Main referred to, we've had AUD 11.3 billion made available to us as part of that facility.
I'm pleased to report in terms of its aspirations and its intention, as of now, we've extended about another AUD 37.5 billion worth of mortgage credit over that period of time to our mortgage customers. We've also increased our lending to small and medium enterprises by about AUD 2.5 billion. The intention of that facility obviously was to enable the provision of credit at what was quite a difficult time for the economy. The loan is extended by the RBA as a term facility, a three-year term facility on a fixed rate basis. As I said, we've obviously utilized that together with other funding to provide support and credit to our customers in the marketplace.
It obviously is a part of a mix for the overall group. We continue, as shareholders are aware from the discussions or the comments that Shemara made earlier, to raise deposits in the marketplace and over time we'll refinance that term funding facility at the appropriate time over the next couple of years. Thanks, Glenn.
Thank you, Alex. Next question, please.
Chair, the next question is from Mr. David Philip Main. The question is: When our new chairman retired as RBA governor in 2016, his final salary for 2015 to 2016 was AUD 1.03 million according to the RBA annual report. That was a full-time public service job as both CEO and chairman carrying the title governor. Now you're the part-time chairman of Macquarie earning around AUD 900,000 a year, and you have a full-time CEO under you whose statutory pay is up to 35 times greater than the chair, depending on the year. Aren't you actually underpaid as chairman, particularly relative to management? What is the current plan in terms of increasing board fees, particularly given inflation is now at a 20-year high of 6.1%? The cost of living is getting worse for Macquarie directors as well.
When are your directors next getting a pay raise to reflect this? Given that the CEO's base pay is rising from AUD 800,000 to AUD 1.5 million this year, shouldn't the chair be on the same base pay?
Well, Mr. Main, tempted as I am to say what a fine question that is. Let me say that, for my own part, I took on the role at what the going rate was. More seriously on pay for directors, we made an increase just not long ago. That was the first one for three years. I think the compound annual growth rate through that three years was between 1% and 2% per annum. We thought that was reasonable. We don't have any active plan to revisit the director fees in the near future. Thanks for your concern. I appreciate it. Next question, please.
Chair, we will now take a question from the room from Mr. Mike Muntisov from ASA. Mr. Mantisov, please stand to ask your question.
Yes. Hello. My name is Mike Muntisov , and I'm a volunteer company monitor for the Australian Shareholders' Association. Today, I hold proxies from 461 shareholders, representing an aggregate total of 506,000 shares. Before my question, I'd like to commend Macquarie for running a hybrid meeting today, which maximizes the opportunity for all shareholders to participate, and we'd like to see that continue. My question referred to recent news articles describing issues with the Pennsylvania bridge repair contract that Macquarie is involved in. Could the company provide an update on the situation and advise of any changes going forward?
I don't think I'm in a position to speak to the details of that contract, I'm afraid. I don't know whether Shemara can do so or if not, we'll have to take it on notice, but.
Yeah, that's. Sorry. Michael Silverton is on from Macquarie Capital, I think, who could cover that. It's a project that we're doing through our infrastructure and energy principal investment team in the U.S., and it's a, you know, it's a PPP project. We do many of these in the U.S. now and then. They have issues, and we work through them in a disciplined way. Is Michael on the line to comment on that? We've got-
Yes, Shemara. I'm on the line.
That's the PDOP. Do you want to comment on that, Michael?
The only thing I would add is that we have a very active PPP business to work on project. As it happens on these projects, we have to be able to give PPP over time. This one we're particularly active.
Michael, can you get a bit closer to your microphone? You're breaking up a little bit there.
There's a bit of feedback then.
Sorry, could you just repeat your last sentence? That broke up.
The team is actively on PPP.
Okay. We might have to come back to that question. Did you have any other questions, sir, at this time? No? Okay. Could I have the next question, please?
Chair, the next question is from Mr. Stephen Mayne. Mr. Mayne, please stand to ask your question.
Thanks, Chair. Just a quick comment on AGM process first. Congratulations to Dennis for his 29th AGMs. It has been a little bit frustrating from my point of view in getting some changes to the AGM. I thought with a new chair and a new company secretary next year, you might be able to adopt some of these things. The first is to disclose the proxy results to the ASX along with the formal addresses before the meeting starts, so we can ask questions if there has been a material protest vote.
Secondly, like several other companies are now doing, can you disclose the outcome of the voting by shares and shareholders, like with a scheme of arrangement, so that the 220,000 retail shareholders can have a bit of a sense of their sentiment on items and not be overwhelmed by the large shareholders such as BlackRock and Macquarie itself, which is above 5%. Thirdly, can we return to following the agenda? I'm sure you don't have a board meeting where you say, "Does anyone wanna talk about anything on the agenda?" You follow the agenda. This process is just a one-off go of questions with no sequential agenda, REM, director elections, et cetera. Can you go back to following the agenda? Can you ditch the media call at the AGM?
The media can get access to you every other day of the year. This is the shareholders' day. I'm not aware of any other company that has a press conference with the media before the AGM, the effect of which is to feed the chooks, off they go, and it lowers the profile of the shareholder debate because all the journos have already gone. They've been well fed. Next, can you publish a full transcript of proceedings like many other companies now do and like you do after your half-yearly analyst briefing calls? If you can produce a 37-page transcript on your website for what the analysts say, why can't you show similar respect for what the shareholders say? Next, can you drop the pre-AGM lunch? Because, again, it has the effect of downgrading the debate. Because people have come, they've listened, watched the videos, eaten, gone home.
This has now got a very small smattering in the room relative to before. You should turn on the food half an hour before the AGM, let everyone have the food as long as they like, but let people who wanna have a discussion stay in the room. That's the conventional way to do it. Can you do an ASX announcement saying when nominations for the board close, like most companies do, rather than burying it in the fine print in the annual report? Can you stick with the hybrid? This is a good model. Online and physical, it's good. You can ditch the telephone. Very few people use the telephone for questions. As you've done today, can you continue to open the online live questions at least half an hour before the AGM, which you did today, which was terrific.
My 95-year-old father, David Mayne, was able to get in there and lodge a few questions with me sitting by his side.
One of them was a very good question.
I hope you buy him some lunch when you get your pay raise. That's my shopping list of 10 requests. You don't have to answer all of them. I just wanted to get them on the record. Dennis will be gone. You haven't done any changes this year with you, Chair. I was gonna ask you, what have you changed so far as chair? That can be my question. Have you got any AGM process reflections? What have you changed so far in your first 85 days as chair?
Well, there's quite a list there. I'm not gonna respond to all of those right now. We have thought a lot about most of these things over the years, and we still think that the conduct of a meeting in this fashion gives us the best outcome. I wouldn't describe what we put on outside as a pre-AGM lunch. It's a cup of coffee mid-morning, which most of us probably need. I certainly do anyway. Thank you for those suggestions and, as usual, we'll reflect on them. I would note on things like transcripts, there's a recording of this meeting will be there, and we've provided you with a transcript on request last year, if I remember rightly. What have I changed in the period since the 10th of May? Not very much.
I don't think much needed to be changed. It's not as though the company was, in some sense, on the wrong track and needed a serious redirection. Not at all. I think we're on the right track. My focus has been on ensuring a smooth handover from Peter, taking up some things which are important at the minute, such as the governance changes we're making on the bank board, preparing for today and so on. That's probably all I've got to say on the first 10 weeks, and I guess you can mark my report card next year. Could I have the next question, please?
Chair, the next question comes from Mr. Howard Pascoe. Mr. Pascoe, please stand to ask your question.
Thank you. Howard Pascoe, I would like to reflect on what I've read in the Sunday Herald Sun in the finance section. A few months ago, there were two finance reporters giving advice about stocks. One said, "Please sell CBA shares for all sorts of reasons." On the same page down the bottom, the other finance reporter said, "Please buy CBA shares," and immediately handed the piece of information to the board via the CEO, and hopefully it's sitting on the wall of their meeting room. Sunday Herald Sun, page 63. Andrew Eddy, finance reporter, talks about Macquarie Group. He recommends sell.
Upgrade cycle is nearing its conclusion in the short term, and with slowing deal flow, investment banking revenues are likely to fall, and Macquarie will struggle to meet the previous year's exceptional results." Please comment, and I table the article. Last Sunday's news.
Well, thank you, Mr. Pascoe, for your research and for your comment. Some say sell, some say buy. That's what makes a market, right? I'm not going to predict the share price, and I can't go beyond what Shemara has already given in some detail, I think, about what the factors are that are likely to affect the businesses over the year ahead. We don't know what the outcomes will be, and I don't think it makes sense for me to try to do any more to predict them. Thank you for your question. Next question, please.
Chair, our next question is from Mr. Christopher Scarth. Please stand to ask your question.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I just wanna comment about your appointment as chair. I've only been a shareholder of Macquarie for about just under a year. My stockbroker advised me if I was after a r-dividend, good company to buy it. Very pleased with it, et cetera. Watched the price move up and down. Of course, in the last half of last year, I started seeing articles in the newspapers about the so-called tax scandal in Germany, which this bank was involved in going right back to 2008 . It described in some international press as the biggest bank scandal in the history of the world. $80 billion was described as at stake, of which German taxpayers through a loophole that was there, so-called there, have funded this investment.
It is in these articles. It said that up to maybe plus 30 people at our bank start being interviewed by the German authorities about their involvement over the last decade or more in the scheme, including very high levels. Secondly, it indicates that there is now a real chance that some of the investors who took our advice from the bank, who lost their money or whatever, may take a class action against Macquarie in the years ahead, which may take years to resolve, of course. In view of the fact in one of these articles, it said that Macquarie advised people to invest up to AUD 16 billion in this, in these schemes. It could be a big class action, let alone what the German government tax authorities investigate.
Already two people in Germany have gone to jail for tax fraud and being involved in what in the scheme in Germany. My question, first of all, is to you as chair, as the former governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, which after the Parliament of Australia, in my view, is the second most important institution in the running of democracy in Australia. Because the Reserve Bank protects the money, protects all of those arrangements, that we all live by in a democracy.
Therefore, though you weren't on the board, and I don't think any existing board members, including the three who are up for election today, my question would be about, though they weren't involved in the board when this took place, can you as new board members or recent board members conduct a thorough internal investigation in what went on, and how did we allow our board in 2008, 2010, despite Macquarie saying there was advice not to invest, the bank's reputation would be at stake, and there was a real risk that it would be considered by tax fraud by the German authorities?
I think it's really incumbent as an example for the risk committee, in particular, to go back and examine how this fell through, what you call the cracks in the floor, that has put the reputation of the bank in which all of us here, we're all very small shareholders, but we are part owners. I don't like being a part owner of an organization that may have been responsible for AUD 16 billion of tax fraud. I would want to ask a question of the auditor. Did, in doing the recent audits this year and previous years, ever think of putting a note in, I may have missed it, about a contingency in the accounts to take if this class action takes place, if the German authorities take action, that there is in the accounts a contingency of what it would cost us, et cetera.
If I might have a good reason, no, don't, no, that's all well covered. Finally, on another matter, which is in terms of the current situation I read about in the media about Eurex, of which this company over what 10, 12 years ago took over a 100% ownership and then subsequently sold down and now a significant minority. We now have press reports that the original founder of the company is suing Eurex that he is entitled to get a large amount of unlisted options paid, which might be to the tune of millions and billions and millions dollars. Did the risk committee, when it took the decision to approve the takeover of that company, at least do due diligence to find out who had all the share options, and were they limited and at what price?
If that wasn't done, then we are wide open for this bloke to take action, and I don't support him in any way. Again, it is risk committee work of both the board and the senior management. Mr. Chairman, overall, I have nothing but what the bank has been doing in so many areas in your report today is fantastic. It's very good. Don't argue with that, et cetera. I'm delighted to see a significant number of women on the board and I think one of the big organizations CEO, which is breaking glass ceilings. Shemara, congratulations on doing that. These two issues of risk management cannot be avoided. Finally to you, Mr. Chairman, in view of your reputation, which is outstanding from the governor of the Reserve Bank, I would expect you, as Mr. Mayne has said to use your position to change the culture where necessary that these risks are not taking on.
'Cause one of the things that happens, if we'd got away with it, that money would've been big income and it would've affected a claim under the remuneration report that senior executives would've claimed a bigger outcome. That is a problem for the remuneration committee, et cetera. That's why I raise this, is that in the future, the remuneration committee can't ignore that when decisions were taken by the board, senior management, it affect the remuneration report. As a result today, my very small number of shares, I won't vote for the remuneration report. I will vote for the election of the new three, the three directors because they weren't there when this all went wrong. I congratulate them, anticipate their election.
The remuneration report, despite all its check and everything, and I would point out in conclusion, the annual report is 250 pages. What is the biggest section in the remuneration report? In the annual report? It's the remuneration report. 50 pages of explanation, of trying to explain to us how they justify the remuneration of the top 20 people in the company. More than any other part of the report. Now this is the same, I've been at BHP, NAB, same thing. I just think it puts this out of kilter, that it looks like the board is only interested in most of its time in looking at the remuneration.
Now, I know that's not right, but when you have 50 pages of it, of which I think Einstein would have had trouble trying to work out what all the formulas are. They've given me the mic, Mr. Chairman. I just conclude on saying Mr. Mayne's suggestions about the structure and the conduct of the meeting, much of it I agree with him, which was positive. However, I do say the election of the directors should not take place until after there is discussion on the financial report and the remuneration report, so people can ask questions and then might decide how they're going to vote. I notice this in other big companies I go to.
The election of the directors is at the close of the meeting when it's opened and stays open for a while, not before, at the very beginning, before you get a chance to ask these questions on the performance. Overwhelmingly, other than those two issues, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to your using your undoubted skill to stop some of the what happened in the past doesn't happen again.
Well, there's a lot of questions in there, so thank you for them. I'm gonna try to address some of each of those elements to some extent. On the German matter, well, we are talking about transactions that took place quite some time in the past, as you said, and I don't myself have full visibility over what involvement the board had, that board at that time had over those things. I would say this is a very wide-ranging investigation. Yes, Macquarie has been asked to respond to requests for information, and we are, and a number of people in the company have been named as needing to respond to that. There's a very large number of banks that are in that position. We're just one of them, probably not the biggest target, I don't think.
Though, of course, we can't put ourselves in the mind of the German authorities. There are a number of other German civil claims relating to dividend trading as well. In terms of the accounts, there is a provision in the accounts, and Kristin, if she wishes to add, can comment on that. We don't disclose exactly what that amount is for reasons that I think would probably be obvious, but we do revisit that provision each time we go through the accounts. The amounts that you quoted, I'm not in a position to kind of confirm whether they are actually the right sort of amounts to think of. I'm not aware myself of impending class actions on the matter at this point in time.
That's probably what I can say about the German matter. In terms of going forward, I think the company does have a very strong culture of careful analysis of, yes, we can technically, should we do it? What are the financial risks, but also non-financial risks that might be associated with something we are contemplating doing? We do have an active process of doing that, so I can assure you on that going forward. On the Nuix question, well, obviously we regret the current position for Nuix investors, of which Macquarie remains quite a substantial one. Macquarie's still actually the largest single shareholder, I think.
To the best of our knowledge, having made due inquiry here, the people who did the IPO undertook all the usual rigorous processes, and they had no reason to believe on the basis of the information they had then that the forecast in the prospectus wouldn't be achieved. As far as I know, that's probably the case, that is the case for the directors of Nuix as well, which of course is a separate company, but that's actually a matter for them, and the decision to do the IPO ultimately was their decision. These days, Nuix being a separate ASX-listed company, it's of course not for us to comment on their prospects in any way. I think we would say, Shemara, that we still believe they have a great product, and we are committed shareholders at this time.
That's probably what I can say on Nuix. On the remuneration report, yes, you noticed how big it is, and so do we. We have to write it and be responsible for it. I think what I'd say is that this is actually what investors and regulators and proxy advisors and institutional shareholders require. They expect to see all that stuff and more, and we have to respond to that. You know, it would be great if all that could be done much more briefly, but really, we're responding to requirements and requests for enhanced disclosure and increased disclosure that we've received over time, and we really don't feel we have a great deal of choice about that. Yes, it's very lengthy.
I think we'll find that ESG, the ESG part of the report is also gonna get more lengthy as we respond to requirements and requests that people have on that. When I meet with shareholder groups, that's probably what we spend most of our time talking about, actually. Yes, it's gonna get more bulky, but that is the world we live in, and we honestly don't feel that we have the choice to do otherwise. I think that's probably all I can do on those things. Shemara, do you wanna cover anything more on the Nuix question?
No, Glenn, I think you covered all that well. Thank you.
All right. Perhaps we could move to the next question, please.
Chair.
Before we do, I'll offer Kristin the opportunity to talk about the accounts. Thanks, Kristin.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the question. I did just want to take the opportunity to say in this context, my role as auditor is to consider the application of the accounting policies by the company. In this case, there are accounting standards around the provisions and around the contingent liabilities, as the chair indicated. There is a provision in place. We have used our role to challenge and look through that provision in quite a bit of detail, and we're satisfied with the application of the accounting policies by the company.
Thank you, Kristin. We have Michael Silverton back on the line, so we can go back, Silverton, if you're there, to the ASA question because we couldn't quite get the response. Let's do that now. Are you there?
Sure, Glenn. Hopefully, you can hear me now. Just on the PennDOT project, I'd just say, we continue to work on the project with our partners, but otherwise I can't provide any additional detail at this stage. These are long-term projects and we continue to work through issues as they emerge, and engage the community.
Thanks, Michael. Can we have the next question, please?
Chair, we have another question in the room from shareholder Swan Duan. I will ask her question. Since the Nuix IPO, the company has downgraded its earnings several times. Did Macquarie's risk management team investigate into Nuix's management and performance before investing 66% shareholdings into Nuix? Shares dropped from AUD 5.31 to about AUD 0.50. What are your views for Nuix from here? Does it hurt Macquarie's reputation?
I think I've covered with Nuix what I can. The original investment by Macquarie, of course, was quite a long time ago when Nuix was a much smaller company. Just to repeat, we regret the position that Nuix investors have encountered. We're also still an investor and we wish it would have been otherwise, but nobody could have foreseen. I don't think that the forecasts that were made in the IPO would go astray in the way they did. We're still their largest shareholder, and we still think that Nuix has a great technology and we're supportive of the business, but we're not in a position to comment in detail about their profit prospects and things like that. They are a separate ASX-listed company, so it's up to them to talk about those things.
Next question, please.
Chair, the next question is from Mr. Stephen Mayne. Mr. Mayne, please stand to ask your question.
Chair, I suspect you're quaking in your boots that former Senator Schacht is gonna vote against the REM report. I think he probably had more influence in the Labor caucus voting for Keating and against Hawke twice than he will have today. We're tall, but we're small when it comes to shareholding, Chris. I've got two quick questions. First one, last year, I asked whether there was going to be a Macquarie book, whether you were gonna investigate a Macquarie book because you had such a great story to tell, and there's been so many books on the likes of Afterpay, Andrew Forrest, Kerry Stokes, James Hardie. And then I discovered that Joyce Moullakis from The Australian is actually trying to write an unauthorized book at the moment.
I was just gonna encourage you to cooperate with that because you've got such a great story to tell. Many powerful individuals or institutions in this situation, and Twiggy did this, as did Kerry Stokes, is when someone does an unauthorized book, they rush out or compete with the authorized version. You suddenly get two books on the same topic. How are you approaching a journalist attempting to do 100,000 words on Macquarie? Are you gonna cooperate? Because you can be a bit control freaky and, you know, secretive sometimes. Are you cooperating? I suggest, given that this magnificent book on Bankers Trust was written authorized, Gillian knows all about it. She's in here many times. Fantastic read. You bought Bankers Trust.
They were a bit sad when you bought it, so they rushed out the book to get their story out there when you took them over and they disappeared. Can I suggest this, that you read whatever Joyce serves up, having cooperated, and then you commission Gideon to do the official history and base it on all the great work he did with Bankers Trust earlier on. I'll come back with a second question after you answer that.
Interesting question. Thank you. I'll consider that possibility. I think we'd probably say that not that we're seeking to be uncooperative, but we're mainly focused on running the business rather than writing stories. I don't know if you want to add anything on that, Shemara, or not.
There's nothing to add. Thank you for the comments.
Okay, next question, Steven.
I'm actually reading out one I asked last year. Macquarie's constitution mentions 10 as being the maximum number of directors, and we currently, I think, have nine or 10. Macquarie is one of the only ASX 100 companies with no constitutional room for board expansion to accommodate non-board endorsed external candidates.
Will you consider amending the constitution at next year's AGM to either adopt the Rio Tinto model of having no board size cap or matching AMP's cap of 16, ANZ's 15, BHP's 20, Scentre Group's 16, Westpac's 15, or the many listed companies which have a maximum of 12 directors? 'Cause a couple times in the past when I've run for the board, you've done the old, "Sorry, sir, there's no room in the inn." And then, even if I got 100% in favor, I'd still lose, 'cause you'd use the chairman's proxies to get me down 96 and you'd say, "Sorry, those two got 98. You only got 96. There's no room in the inn. You're out." So for a 50% majority to be satisfied, you need headroom in the constitution. You don't have headroom currently.
It is normal to have headroom. Dennis always says no, but Dennis is now leaving. I'm asking if you could actually do this one for next year. Finally, a bouquet. For years, you did the placement refresh resolution. You'd do a placement, and then you'd seek shareholder approval for a refresh. You've stopped it. Well done. You didn't need to do it. You can raise AUD 10 billion a year under the 15% threshold, so it was a wasted resolution that created the impression you were about to do a super jumbo placement, and you've stopped it. Dennis, for small mercies, many thanks for getting around on that one.
Right. Well, thank you very much for that. I think the substantive question is the size of the board. The size of the board's actually gone up and down since I've been on it. The corporate governance statement notes the board has resolved for a maximum number to be 12 where needed. I think we do have headroom. I'm not a person myself who's in the camp of bigger and bigger is always better. I think we have adequate headroom to appoint new directors where we think that person's gonna make a significant contribution to the company. I don't think caps have actually prevented us from making good appointments where we thought there was one to be made. Thank you for your comment, and I will reflect on it.
Could I have the next question, please?
Chair, there are no further questions.
The last one, Stephen.
I'm very happy that you've been appointed the chair. The only blot on the copy book which I do think is reasonable to raise is the Note Printing Australia scandal where the RBA was making facilitation payments to various Third World countries and interesting middlemen. The RBA got the full Baker McKenzie treatment from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, and that was before they owned Channel Nine and could have done you over on 60 Minutes as well. Now, when they do the full front page and 60 Minutes, hello James Packer and Crown. You know, it's not good. I actually think the RBA got away with one there because the rest of the media, for some crazy reason, didn't follow up on what was an incredible story.
I'd like you to reflect on your side of the story about that scandal, where the RBA 50% shareholder in Note Printing Australia was bribing people all over the world over printing contracts. My second question is the political donations one. Macquarie continues to give six figures in donations, not cash, but you pay to go to lots of events. Many companies, Aristocrat Leisure, BHP, Rio Tinto, have a zero payments policy. We don't pay for events, no cash for access deals. We are clean.
Given that we have borrowed AUD 11.3 billion from the government at 0.1% when everyone else is copping rising interest rates and we've got a nice three year term, is it time for you as the new chair to draw a line and say, "Macquarie will not give a dollar in political donations ever again," like best practice from many other large ASX 50 companies?
Well, as I understand it, our engagement with the political process consists of paying to attend events or memberships of forums. I don't think we make substantive contributions at all to political parties. We're transparent about what the expenditure has been and conservative in our disclosure approach. Any contributions are disclosed to the Electoral Commission and so on. I think we're in an okay place there. You know, for what it's worth, my personal view is no, I'm not interested in making contributions to political parties. There is a case for attending events where that's in the interest of the business, and that's, I think, what's happening. On the NPA security things, these are events alleged to have taken place as far back as 2004.
The legal process has exhaustively run its full course there. The outcomes are what they are as a matter of public record. I don't have anything further to say about those things beyond what I said about them in 2009, 2010 and 2012, as I recall. There was a question there, sir. Yes?
Just a supplementary claim about donations.
Who'd have thought?
Who would've thought? Yes. A Labor bloke turning up at a capitalist meeting, you might well say. Why I raise is that I think that what he raised, in view of your personal comment that you're not really interested. In South Australia, where I come from, the new premier has announced in the election campaign that he will move legislation to ban all donations from anybody, including trade unions, companies, individuals. I think the ceiling will be AUD 100 or something to political parties.
There is a move in the new government also to look at issues to do with, honesty in advertising, et cetera. In view of the fact that you're one of the five big banks in Australia and have got a lot of weight, may I suggest, in view of your personal view, if you can convince the rest of your board, that you might make a submission to the South Australian State Government when it conducts a review of how to do this legislation. Secondly, to the new federal government about why, you think such moves would be good for democracy in Australia, so we don't end up with some character spending AUD 100 million to get one member of parliament elected, which was really a perversion of the system. In view of your own comment, Mr. Chairman, I would certainly, as a very small shareholder and a Labor bloke, encourage you to take that view.
Well, it'll be interesting to see how the new rules in South Australia handle going to an event which is, you know, the sorts of amounts of money that we're talking about in the Macquarie context.
You should make a submission.
Well, I'm not sure that we're in a position to make submissions to government policy proposals. Anyhow, let me take that on notice, and thank you for the suggestion. Are there any further questions?
Chair, there are no further questions.
All right. Thank you. As there are no further questions, I'm now gonna ask for a summary of the proxy voting to be shown. Please note that all open proxies given to the chairman will be voted by me in favor of all items. As you can see, the proxy votes were strongly in favor of all of the proposed resolutions. If you haven't yet cast your own vote, I ask you to do so now. Link Market Services is our share registry, will act as returning officer, and they'll determine the results of the polls. Could everyone who wishes to vote please now ensure that you've done so before we close. I'll just give people time to complete that. As best I can see, people have completed their voting. Thank you, everybody. The polls will now be closed.
The results will be announced to the ASX as soon as practical this afternoon. That concludes the business of our annual general meeting, and so I'm closing the meeting. If you've been issued with a handset, please return that on your way out. Thank you very much for your attendance, your participation, and for your support of Macquarie. Have a good afternoon. Thank you.