25 June 2003 12:00am

Macquarie Bank are masters at publishing an elegant and lengthy annual report that manages to somehow avoid content. Ignoring how much executives got paid, about the only news is the time frame that Macquarie allows for the bank's "financial services" unit to turn a decent profit - which is "in the longer term", as opposed to the other Macquarie's divisions which all assert they report an improved profit in 2004.

Financial Services contributed two per cent of Macquarie's profit in the year to March 2003.

The Financial Services group will target acquisition of adviser...