Respected, not always loved, Macquarie is an exceptional ‘Australian and global financial success story’. So says Steve Harker, a rival investment banker from Morgan Stanley, quoted on the back of this book. The authors tackle an intriguing question: how a bonsai operation grew tall, dominating parts of the world of financial engineering. In 400 pages, with a useful index, plus 25,000 words of notes accessible via a QR code, Moullakis and Wright, two senior financial journalists, provide insights into Macquarie, Australia’s only significant global financial institution, which today directly employs more than 17,000 people in thirty-three countries.

The authors explain how and why Macquarie became what it is today. As the authors say of so many of the investment operations the bank has spawned and owns: ‘Macquarie is on the ground, in the weeds, in the game.’ This is a well-researched, gossipy, perceptive account of Macquarie. It is fascinating to read how in just a few decades the business moved from specialist domestic corporate adviser, and money market and bullion operator, to the world’s leading non-governmental operator of infrastructure assets.

The idea of an ‘inside story’, as suggested by the subtitle, points to cooperation from within the bank, with the four former CEOs and many other veterans and current players giving their views through interviews. Sometimes the authors’ interpretations read like Macquarie speaking notes, but the authors try commendably to offer a fuller picture, frankly admitting at times how the reader might be confused by the complexities of some Macquarie products and strategies.

To date, only Lewis D. Solomon’s The Promise and Perils of Infrastructure Privatization (2009) has covered in book form Macquarie’s history. But Solomon, the Van Vleck Research Professor of Law at the George Washington University, mostly concentrated on the infrastructure funds side of Macquarie. He was persona non grata within Macquarie when doing his research. Solomon questioned the efficacy of the Macquarie model, just as the unfolding Global Financial Crisis (GFC) implicitly did.