Founders' $250m bid for Cubbie rejected

A buy-back bid by Cubbie Station's founders was rejected in favour of selling the irrigator to a Chinese consortium. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen Source: The Australian

Take a flight over Cubbie Station, the 93,000 hectare irrigation farm in Queensland that has been approved for sale to Chinese investors.

AUSTRALIA's biggest irrigator, Cubbie Station, was sold to a Chinese consortium despite a home-grown bid to buy it for more than $250 million.

Cubbie chairman Keith De Lacy, a former Queensland treasurer, yesterday revealed the group's administrator had rejected a buy-back offer from Cubbie's founders, the Stevenson and Brimblecombe families.

But he declared the Australian consortium was still "ready, willing and able" to make another offer if the Chinese contract crashes.

Mr De Lacy said Cubbie's founding shareholders had made a buy-back proposal to administrator McGrathNicol and bankers NAB and Suncorp about six months ago.

"It was long before they announced this last sale," he said yesterday.

"(The administrators) would have got more than the $250m they're talking about (with the Chinese buyer). But that was rejected."

Mr De Lacy said Cubbie's administrators "certainly have an obligation to get the best price for the creditors and shareholders".

"Some of the existing shareholders could be very disappointed if they learned they hadn't maximised the price," he said.

A spokesman for McGrathNicol refused to discuss the sale price or conditions of the Chinese contract.

It signed a sale agreement last week with a consortium led by Chinese-based textiles giant Shandong RuYi Scientific and Technological Group, which will buy 80 per cent, and Australian wool trading company Lempriere.

The Federal Government's Foreign Investment Review Board had pre-approved the sale in August.

Independent senator Nick Xenophon yesterday said he found it "extraordinary" that FIRB had granted approval nearly two months before the sale contract had been signed.

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