Lender trims staff after senior hires, joining NAB and Westpac in a wave of redundancies across Australian lending
A private credit group with exposure to collapsed developer Bathla Group has confirmed a round of redundancies, joining a wave of job cuts across Australian lending.
MaxCap Group confirmed the cuts to MPA, but disputed the size of the redundancies claimed in earlier reporting from other mastheads.
“MaxCap has announced a small number of redundancies predominantly in growth areas,” a MaxCap spokesperson told MPA. “This follows a number of senior appointments made in recent months, including CEO, Head of Investment Management and COO.
“This is consistent with our standard business management to optimise our structure and resource allocation and does not impact the focus or delivery of our real estate credit funds management business.”
The spokesperson said MaxCap has “one of the smallest” exposures among the 40 lenders exposed to Bathla Group. That exposure is a $23 million land facility with development application (DA) approval, worth around 0.28 per cent of MaxCap’s total assets under management. It is understood MaxCap has been reducing its Bathla exposure over the past 12 months. Apollo Global Management holds a 45 per cent stake in MaxCap.
Who is exposed to Bathla Group?
Teneo was appointed administrator of Bathla’s main entity, Universal Property Group, on 25 August, after managing director Bhart Bhushan cited a “perfect storm” of softening sales, tax changes and higher construction costs.
At the 4 September creditors’ meeting, administrators put preliminary secured lender debt at $3.1 billion.
About 40 private credit funds are exposed, with positions ranging from $1.5 million to $340 million. Lenders include PAG, Balmain, Trilogy, Centuria Bass, Ray White Capital, La Trobe Financial and Wingate.
CVS Lane and Centuria Bass froze redemptions after the collapse, and MA Financial capped withdrawals from its $2.3 billion secured property loan fund at 1% a month.
Sarah Court, chair of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), has framed the Bathla collapse as “the first real test for private credit”.
Private credit stress has also spread to managers with no link to Bathla. Metrics Credit Partners, which manages about $40 billion, froze withdrawals from two unlisted wholesale funds holding more than $9 billion after a valuation dispute with auditor KPMG. Net tangible asset values across three of its ASX-listed funds were cut by about 5% combined, with the Real Estate Multi-Strategy Fund down more than 12%.
Late last year, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) put the private credit sector on notice after a review found potentially damaging widespread practices in the rapidly growing sector.
Big banks swing the axe
Earlier this week, NAB confirmed that it intends to cut up to 2,500 roles, about 6% of its internal workforce, with up to 1,500 going before the end of 2026. Chief executive Andrew Irvine said customer-facing roles would not be materially affected.
On Thursday, the Finance Sector Union (FSU) said Westpac was cutting about 250 roles.
“These stealthy job cuts at Westpac are the Christmas gift no one asked for, and the FSU holds grave concerns that Westpac has more in the works,” FSU national assistant secretary Nicole McPherson said.
“All banks need to look at the bigger picture and see their employees as more than just numbers on a balance sheet.
“They are people with families who support other people with families and the value they bring to a company can never be fully replaced by a machine.”
