Australian consortium drops bid for tracts
Print Edition
AUSTRALIA’S richest woman Gina Rinehart is in the box seat to buy the country’s largest private land holding, cattle and pastoral tracts the size of South Korea, after a rival bidder dropped out.
The BBHO consortium — made up of a group of outback cattle families — said yesterday that it was withdrawing its A$386 million (US$293 million) offer for S. Kidman & Co despite receiving a “strong groundswell of public support.”
The decision follows a pledge by Rinehart a day earlier to buy the land holdings outright if her A$386.5 million joint bid with Chinese partner Shanghai CRED, which requires approval by Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board, was rejected on national interest grounds.
A source close to the bidding process said Rinehart’s undertaking to buy S. Kidman alone if necessary killed off the BBHO bid, which was relying on its all-Australian status.
“That was decisive,” the source said. “If they had continued it would have resulted in a financial shootout they couldn’t win.”
Ownership of S. Kidman has been a lightning rod for concerns about the sale of Australian agriculture and other key assets to foreign investors.
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