Today at the opening market 10 million plus shares have changed...

Today at the opening market 10 million plus shares have changed hand.

This is very remarkable trading volume at the opening.
IMO something is going to happen.

As at 12:50
693 buyers 53,025,763 shares
207 sellers 19,218.093 shares
Ratio 2.759 versus 1

Furthermore encouraging news is that Macquarie is expanding in North American business.

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Mac seizes chance to boost US presence
Jennifer Hewett, National affairs correspondent | September 17, 2009
Article from: The Australian

MACQUARIE Group plans to take full advantage of the shakeout in global financial markets by dramatically expanding the size and scope of its North American business, according to chief executive Nicholas Moore.

Mr Moore said the extent of the downturn in the US had enabled Macquarie to make significant acquisitions that would be the springboard for the bank to broaden its reach there, just as it had done so successfully in Australia and Asia.

Macquarie recently bought several US businesses, ranging from Delaware Investments, a big US funds manager, to Constellation Energy, a substantial natural gas trading operation, and a big leasing business. This will all extend the bank's reputation beyond the toll roads for which Macquarie is still best known in North America.

"The US funds market is the biggest in the world and this is a unique opportunity to get that sort of foothold that we would never have been able to grow organically. So it really is something special," Mr Moore told The Australian.

"Could we buy a Delaware in normal times? Absolutely not -- because the value of the funds under management is very high ($US126 billion or $144.5bn), profitability is very high and the multiples these businesses trade on is very high. Now all of that is reversed at the moment, so it is a good time to buy."

To bolster its North American investment banking ambitions, Macquarie has been hiring a number of key people on Wall Street, with Mr Moore making it plain he sees this as only the beginning of what could grow into a new business powerhouse.

Mr Moore said Macquarie had been able to hire outstanding people with a great record, many of whom had come out of institutions that had failed or nearly failed because of the extraordinary market disruption.

"It gives the ability to access teams, people, businesses we can't do in normal circumstances," he said.

In the wake of the crisis, the market strongly questioned Macquarie's ability to manage a transition away from debt-fuelled acquisitions and the highly lucrative listed infrastructure funds model that propelled its extraordinary growth for so long.

After hitting a high of $97.10, the bank's shares fell as low as $15 in the general market panic of last March, but they have since bounced back to close yesterday at $51.20.

But Mr Moore professes total confidence that Macquarie's expansion will continue robustly, despite the altered market conditions, with particular room for growth in the US.

For the year ended March 31, the US was responsible for 8 per cent of Maquarie's total operating income, with another 48 per cent of revenue coming from Australia and 24 per cent from Asia.

"At the moment, the US is the smallest element of our world and we would hope for it to grow and fully expect it will," he said.

Body: "Allowing us to have an equity capital markets capability in those markets is something we could only have dreamt of even 12 months ago. But is a very real prospect and adding to that now, a debt markets capability."

But many banking analysts and peers doubt that Macquarie will be able to have a major impact in a large market like the US once it moves out of its particular area of expertise, infrastructure, or that it will generate the same super profits.

But Mr Moore said one reason Macquarie would expand so rapidly in the US was precisely because the North American downturn had been so severe and -- unlike Europe -- the US economy responded relatively quickly to changed economic conditions.

"Beyond normal organic growth, we are not seeing the opportunities in Asia at the moment, because it didn't feel as much pain in general as what we saw in the US," he said.

"In the US we have seen people in the energy business stepping back, which gives us opportunity. We see people in the securities and advisory business saying this is a good time to step out, which provides us the the opportunity. So if you look at what is happening in North America, you see a greater response to the broader economic circumstances. To date we haven't seen that in Europe so much -- not that we haven't been looking."

He said the future profitability of Macquarie would depend entirely on the competence of its people. But he emphasised that 40 per cent of Macquarie's income derived from businesses that did not exist five years ago.

In the Moore view of the world, Macquarie's international expansion is a steady evolutionary process that extends well beyond the common perception of it in Australia as a pioneer of specialised funds.

"When we go into a new market, we don't go in with everything we do," he said.

"We start off with one thing and then you see if you can broaden out the offering. That is what is taking place."

In terms of the general global economy, Mr Moore said that, historically, the more the global economy shrank, the faster and stronger it came back. He said Macquarie had been on the optimistic side through the whole crisis.

But he warned that it might still be different this time because "the amount of debt loose in the world was unprecedented". "We know the future is a place none of us has been, so we are always extremely cautious about it," he said.
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Let's see what is going to happen.

Regards,