Foreign Investment Review Board approves one of the richest rural property deals ever in Australia

Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board has given the green light to one of the nation’s biggest-ever rural property deals.

AUTHORITIES have given the green light to what could be one of Australia’s biggest-ever rural property deals.

ASX-listed Webster Limited — Australia’s fourth-oldest company and one of the nation’s biggest landholders — yesterday announced it had received Foreign Investment Review Board approval to proceed with its proposed sale to Canada’s Public Sector Investment Board for $854 million.

PSP Investments, which manages the superannuation funds of the nation’s public service, armed forces and the 30,000 member-strong Royal Canadian Mounted Police, launched a takeover bid in October.

The proposed deal is one of the biggest in Australian agriculture in recent decades, more than doubling the high-profile sale of pastoral icon S Kidman and Co to an Australian-Chinese consortium for $386.5 million in 2016.

Under the PSP bid, which has been unanimously endorsed by the Webster board, the company would be delisted from the ASX.

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PSP currently owns a 19.1 per cent stake in Webster and as part of the takeover proposes to spend $724 million buying the company’s remaining shares for $2 each — a 57 per cent premium to the $1.27 share price the day before the takeover announcement.

In yesterday’s statement, Webster Limited chief executive Maurice Felizzi said the Supreme Court of NSW had made orders to proceed with the release of documents pertaining to the proposed sale ahead of a shareholder vote in Sydney on February 3 next year.

“Webster further advises that the Foreign Investment Review Board has approved the proposed acquisition of Webster by PSP Investments,” Mr Felizzi said in the statement.

Founded in 1831, Webster has about 17,100ha of cropping, 320,000ha of livestock and 3000ha of orchard ventures in southern NSW, South Australia and Tasmania, as well as significant water assets totalling more than 153,000 megalitres.

PSP has become a major player in Australian agriculture in recent years. It was named as the joint buyer of cotton giant Auscott’s Midkin vertically integrated aggregation in northern NSW, in a deal estimated at about $300 million. This month it bought 12,000ha of almond orchards in Victoria’s Sunraysia region which were on the market for more than $300 million in addition to $490 million worth of permanent water entitlements.

In the past year it paid $208 million for a majority stake in the 44,000ha BFB portfolio of cropping farms around Temora in southern NSW, $132.7 million in a joint venture for the 9593ha Bengerang and Darling Farms aggregations in northern NSW and $16 million for a 519ha vineyard at Cullulleraine, west of Mildura.

PSP also has financial interests in Hewitt Cattle Australia, which runs 11 cattle stations in Queensland, NSW and the Northern Territory, the Stahmann Farms walnut and almond business in NSW and South Australia and Daybreak Cropping with its five aggregations totalling more than 45,000ha in Victoria, NSW, Queensland and Western Australia. Through Hewitt Cattle Australia it is also a shareholder in the Arcadian Organic and Natural Meat business.