Macquarie's White House wager
CEO Shemara Wikramanayake tells Capital Brief why she's optimistic about the future of Macquarie's US investments, no matter who wins next week's election.
While much of the world awaits next week’s US election in a state of high anxiety, Macquarie Group, which earns nearly a third of its income from the Americas where it manages fund and investments employing 64,000 staff, is remarkably sanguine.
“We’ve been in the US 30 years and we have had a successful track record investing, in general, and we invest for the mid term ... The short-term, macro things are not the biggest issue for us,” CEO Shemara Wikramanayake told Capital Brief following the silver donut's half-year result which, incidentally, was not hugely well-received by the market.
Would a Donald Trump victory hurt Macquarie? While observers believe Joe Biden’s environmentally tilted Inflation Reduction Act would be targeted under a Trump regime, Wikramanayake said funds were already committed and unlikely to be cut for Macquarie projects, although future opportunities might be impacted.
“Interestingly, we have sustainable aviation fuel projects and they are predominantly in Republican states,” she said. Meanwhile, Macquarie’s focus on digital infrastructure and data storage projects is unlikely to be dampened by a Trump win, nor energy projects linked to that kind of infrastructure.
