Questions are being asked about the performance of investment bank Macquarie.
Before the global financial crisis, Macquarie Group was known as the 'millionaires' factory, so well paid were its staff.
Macquarie thrived via a combination of merger and acquisition deals and complex financial engineering driven by large amounts of debt.
However, Radio New Zealand's Sydney correspondent reports that the deals are drying up, leverage is a dirty word and the fees are not what they were.
Macquarie's shares are about 70% below their pre-crisis peak and staff are being paid more by scrip than in cash.
Piling up the humiliation last week, analysts at another bank, Citigroup, downgraded Macquarie stock to a 'sell', noting that the group's return on equity is now lower than its cost of capital.
