Banking's Most Powerful Club Just Got a Shy New Member

The little-known Shemara Wikramanayake has just been catapulted into the ranks of the most powerful women in the global financial industry. The publicity-shy 56-year-old was Thursday named the next chief executive officer of Macquarie Group Ltd., the Australian investment bank that has grown into the world’s biggest manager of infrastructure assets, hoovering up everything from U.S. toll roads and European airports to London’s Thames Water. The three-decade company veteran will replace Nicholas Moore when he steps down Nov. 30 after leading the Sydney-based company through a 10-year unbroken run of profit, helping the shares surge more than 600 percent since the depths of the global financial crisis.