The recent retirement of Macquarie Group CEO Shemara Wikramanayake marks the culmination of a highly successful career. She’s leaving the company with shares worth hundreds of millions of dollars after nearly 40 years at the Sydney-based institution. Under her leadership, the “millionaires’ factory” has increased its annual revenue by around 80% and nearly doubled its profit. Wikramanayake has also overseen and consolidated the group’s transition from a firm specialising in privatised infrastructure to a global merchant bank earning profits from commodity trading, specialist asset finance and wealth management.

Macquarie shareholders, who have tripled their money over the past eight years (with dividends and capital gains), have plenty of reason to be grateful.

The public, in Australia and elsewhere, may take a slightly more jaundiced view. The foundations of the millionaires’ factory were laid through a string of private infrastructure deals that greatly enriched Macquarie while delivering expensive or substandard services.

The biggest disaster of all has been Thames Water, privatised by the Thatcher government in the UK and acquired by a Macquarie-led consortium in 2006. After extracting billions in dividends for itself and other investors, and loading........

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