The Australian government yesterday approved the sale of the nation’s largest cattle empire to Australia’s richest woman and her Chinese business partner, ending a drawn-out battle over foreign ownership of farmland.
The nation’s largest private landholding, S. Kidman & Co Ltd, is to be acquired by Outback Beef, an Australia-China consortium majority owned by billionaire Gina Rinehart, with a 33 percent stake held by Shanghai CRED Real Estate Stock Co Ltd (上海中房置業), Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison said.
In May, the government said that the collection of cattle ranches covering more than 101,000km2 in four states would never be sold to foreign interests, after vetoing a Chinese-led bid.
Photo: AFP
Foreign ownership of farmland is a thorny issue in Australia, where many worry that Chinese-owned farms could supply Australian-grown produce to Chinese parent companies at discount prices or refuse to sell to Australian buyers.
In October, Rinehart said she was willing to pay the entire A$386.5 million (US$288 million) for the land if regulators blocked her Chinese partner.
Under the proposal approved yesterday, Rinehart’s company — Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd — would control the board and day-to-day operations of the business, Morrison said in a statement.
The biggest property in the empire will be acquired by a neighboring farming family. That ranch lies partially inside a vast Australian Department of Defence-controlled rocket firing range, which had raised security concerns about foreigners owning leases there. Morrison said removing the ranch from Outback Beef’s control had mitigated those concerns.
“The treasurer’s approach to the sale of Kidman enabled a local Australian company to pay a fair market price and retain Kidman in Australian control,” Rinehart said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce yesterday criticized the US for thwarting a Chinese investment fund’s proposed acquisition of German semiconductor equipment maker Aixtron SE.
Aixtron on Thursday said that China’s Fujian Grand Chip Investment Fund (中國福建芯片投資基金) had dropped its 670 million euro (US$710.60 million) takeover offer to buy the firm, after the US blocked the deal on security grounds.
“The US, in the name of national security, frequently departs from market and commercial principles to interfere with normal business activity,” ministry spokesman Shen Danyang (沈丹陽) said.
The deal fully conformed “with international business practices and market principles and shouldn’t have been subjected to political interference,” Shen said at a regular ministry briefing.
The Aixtron deal had been in trouble for some time.
The German government withdrew its approval for the deal in October, reportedly at the bidding of the US.
Last week, US President Barack Obama halted acquisition of Aixtron US following an assessment by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, an interagency task force under the US Department of the Treasury.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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