Macquarie’s Compliance Crackdown Led to an Oil Trader Exodus

Over the past 20 years, Australian banking giant Macquarie Group has transformed itself into a US energy trading powerhouse, eclipsing Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley to become the biggest commodity bank in the world. Under former commodity chief Nick O’Kane, who famously earned more than the CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co, the bank became one of the US’s biggest natural gas traders, a top exporter of American sour crude, and the No. 1 supplier of oil to the US government.

But O’Kane left to join Mercuria Energy Group in early 2024, the most high-profile in a raft of commodities departures that has hampered Macquarie’s US oil and gas business: Oil exports have halted, natural gas trading has tumbled 19%, and the bank had to amend government supply contracts worth about $600 million, according to data and documents compiled by Bloomberg, and interviews with more than a dozen people familiar with the company, including current and former staff.