For Babcock & Brown, the Sydney-based investment and advisory house, it must be galling to be described as Macquarie Bank's "mini-me", as it was in an Australian newspaper last month. It is certainly smaller than its rival but is older and not even a bank.
Nonetheless, Martin Rey, Babcock's director with responsibility for Europe, laughs off the comparison. He said: "As always in the media, there's some truth in it; Macquarie has a similar model. It went public 10 years ago and was a shooting star on the Australian Stock Exchange when the market was looking for a benchmark."