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 ...