Billionaire trucker Lindsay Fox is making a late bid to keep Australia’s largest outback cattle empire in local hands with a push to buy the sprawling S. Kidman & Co stations that are set to fall into Chinese hands.
Mr Fox, worth more than $2 billion and one of Australia’s largest employers, has written to Treasurer Scott Morrison flagging his interest in buying the properties, that are close to being sold in a $300 million deal giving control of the century-old S. Kidman & Co empire to Chinese-owned Shanghai Pengxin Group Co.
Mr Morrison is within weeks of signing off on that deal after blocking an earlier bid last year on national security grounds.
But in a late counter-offer to the deal, Australia’s biggest private family company, Linfox, owned by transport magnate Mr Fox, has expressed its interest.
Linfox Property Group chief executive Andrew Fox told The Weekend Australian: “This asset is a great Australian asset, it’s fourth, fifth generation and it would be a great feeling, like (Agriculture Minister) Barnaby Joyce has said, to have it stay in Australian hands.”
The Kidman family put the pastoral empire on the blocks last year and attracted a slew of offshore interest, primarily from China, but now the Fox family is seeking to buy the business that is being sold through accounting firm Ernst & Young.
“Fox are very interested in the Kidman portfolio of properties; the only disadvantage is that we are late into the tender process,” Andrew Fox said.
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We simply cannot let our national food security fall into foreign hands.
