Crikey

It’s not often that a raw prawn makes it onto Youtube but that’s what you’ll find in this Mayne Report video yesterday defending Macquarie Bank against CNBC raver Jim Cramer.

Hilariously, last night we had the following email exchange with the great Cramer, who founded www.thestreet.com and is now famous the world over for this CNBC rant against the US Federal Reserve in August, which has now cracked almost 2 million views on Youtube.

From: Stephen Mayne
To: madmoney@cnbc.com
Subject: Response from Down Under

Jim, you’re coming the raw prawn at us happy Macquarie fans Down Under.

Hope you enjoy this video response to your Macquarie rave I’ve just posted on Youtube.

Regards, Stephen Mayne

From: James Cramer [mailto:cramer@jjcramerco.com]
To: ‘Stephen Mayne’
Subject: RE: Response from Down Under

First, gratz to you on making a video!! Second, I think you should do them outside. Third I would change that color shirt because it is unflattering. Fourth, I think any business model that sticks overpriced assets into fund holders who don’t know jack is, short-term, BRILLIANT! Fifth, those who sold at my suggestion caught a nice gain Friday into the sell and got out up 34%. Sixth, I have a problem. Unlike most journalists I actually ran money. I know the perils of this kind of commingling. Finally, you are hilarious and I would keep up the comedy act but please, please, stay away from peoples’ money.

jj

Macquarie Bank has also directly emailed Cramer with a pile of material which challenges his claim that the assets are overpriced. For instance, the giant Macquarie Infrastructure Group has looked at 125 deals over the years, but only invested in 31 and every asset disposal has exceeded book value.

Similarly, Macquarie Communications Infrastructure Group (MCG) has “received over 60 deal proposals of which it has invested in four”. And what a big four they have been with more than $10 billion spent on just three deals in 2007.

However, Macquarie is looking a bit wobbly on MCG because the annual report arrived last week and the only disclosure was a base management fee of $31.3 million and a performance fee of $13.5 million.

You have to trawl through the full financial report, which wasn’t sent to shareholders, to find this treasure trove of additional fees paid to the bank - and we’re only covering the big ones:

• Equity and bond placements: $13.65m
• Airwave acquisition advisory fee: $14.9m
• Airwave debt advisory fee: $22.3m
• Arqiva debt refinance fee: $30.3m
• Arqiva acquisition advisory fees: $20.5m
• Arqiva debt advisory fee: $18m

All up, the Macquarie machine gouged an additional $175 million in fees out of the MCG deals in 2006-07 and MCG shares have fallen in a rising market over the past 12 months. Not a good look with the likes of Cramer circling.