Rich listers Lindsay Fox and Max Beck land $100m Essendon Fields deal with super funds

Rich-listers Lindsay Fox and Max Beck have struck a groundbreaking Essendon Fields deal with industry super funds.

Andrew Fox and Max Beck, whose families own Essendon Fields Airport. Pic: SDP Media

Billionaire Lindsay Fox and fellow rich-lister Max Beck have clinched a deal for their Essendon Airport to raise $100 million in long-term debt from three Australian superannuation funds.

AustralianSuper, the country’s biggest industry super fund, another super fund in CBUS and fund manager, IFM Investors, a fund manager, have agreed to lend the money to Mr Fox and Mr Beck’s Essendon Fields over 10 years in a deal understood to be led by Westpac Banking Corporation’s Institutional Bank.

The groundbreaking deal follows that of billionaire Anthony Pratt, who last year struck a $150 million deal with AustralianSuper and IFM to lend the money to his cardboard box maker and paper recycling firm Visy over 10 years in a deal also led by Westpac.

Mr Pratt’s deal was one of the first by a large, privately owned Australian company with super funds, and was similar to deals he has struck in the United States during the past two decades to drive the rapid growth of Visy’s sister company Pratt Industries.

Essendon Fields is jointly owned by long-time friends Mr Fox and Mr Beck, a transport magnate and property developer respectively. Such has been the duo’s rapid construction at Essendon that the precinct now has a book value of about $1 billion.

The long-term debt will help continue development at the precinct, where management want to build more office towers to complement the large car yard zone and Hyatt Place hotel and conference centre that was opened last year.

Essendon Airport is also the biggest corporate jet base in Australia.

More to come