Office workers walk past the company logo in the Macquarie Bank offices in Sydney, Sept. 14, 2007.Tim Wimborne/Reuters
Macquarie Group is adding more Canadian content to the top tier of its energy investment banking group, as the Australian firm is hiring Sandy Edmonstone as its new deputy global head of oil and gas.
Mr. Edmonstone led the oil and gas banking business at National Bank Financial in recent years, helping to push it up the rankings in areas where NBF felt it was lagging. Prior to National, Mr. Edmonstone had been at GMP.
Macquarie has been concentrating management of its global energy banking business in Calgary, after making two big Canadian acquisitions in the space. The bank first bought Orion Securities to get into Canada, giving the Australian firm a focus on resource names. Macquarie later purchased Tristone Capital, a Calgary firm focused on energy property acquisition and divestiture. Canadian business now makes up a substantial chunk of Macquarie's energy activity worldwide.
A veteran of Orion, Dan Cristall, is now global head of oil and gas banking for Macquarie. In an internal note, Mr. Cristall announced Mr. Edmonstone's hiring as an executive director.
"Sandy's experience and skill set is accretive to our existing talent bench," Mr. Cristall said in the note.
Mr. Edmonstone is expected to split his time between drumming up Canadian deals and working on the international business. He is slated to start at Macquarie in December.
National Bank Financial quietly announced his departure internally this week.
"Sandy helped NBF to grow its energy investment banking practice into a lead position in the highly competitive Calgary market," said National Bank Financial co-chief executive officer Ricardo Pascoe, who runs the financial markets business for the firm. "We thank him for this and wish him well. But he did this by building on our core strengths including a dominant position in lending to junior oil & gas companies, the best commodity hedging team in Canada and our perfectly aligned efforts in investment banking, research and equity sales and trading."
Mr. Pascoe said the firm plans "to appoint a new leader of the team in due course."