English Projects Save The Day On Foreign Investment Front

A casino, a big slab of our timber assets and the rest of Comalco look like falling into foreign hands and our list of foreign companies generating more than $200 million in Australia each year has increased by another 20 to 140.
It seems Australia’s foreign ownership failures are even worse than we first thought. After starting with 110 foreign companies generating more than $200 million a year in Australia in the first issue of Crikey, we came up with 10 more companies for the second edition, and a further 20 for this fourth edition. The latest additions include McDonalds, the three Japanese shareholders in Robe River, Mitsui, Nippon Steel and Sumitomo, Goodyear Tyres, fruit group Chiquita Brands, Lucent Technologies, Johnson & Johnson, Kelloggs, US power company AES, Japanese electricial goods company Panasonic, Japanese car and bike giant Mazda, Kodak, Yamaha, US engineering giant Fluor Daniel, the US-controlled Primus Telecommunications, US timber products group Weyerhaeuser, Tony O’Reilly’s Irish media group Independent Newspapers and South African gold company DRD. We can also add Simsmetal, Pacifica and Aristocrat to the Australian companies which will generate more than $200 million offshore in 2000-01, bringing the total to a still miserable 41 (SEE LIST BELOW).

It has been a busy couple of weeks for foreign ownership with London-based Rio Tinto announcing a $1.5 billion mop-up bid for the 28 per cent of aluminium giant Comalco that it does not already own. England has stuff all mining resources but has produced the world’s biggest mining company whereas Australia has enormous mineral deposits but has not been able to produce a company anything like Rio Tinto. At least Rio is run by an Australian in Leon Davis – a Port Pirie boy made good.

The Adelaide Casino has also gone completely foreign after Auckland-based Star City lodged a successful $180 million bid. And even more of the Australian timber industry now rests in foreign hands after CSR sold its timber panels business to Carter Holt Harvey, the New Zealand based company controlled by US giant International Paper.

But it wasn’t all bad news on the foreign investment front. Frank Lowy’s Westfield Holdings was selected to develop a $1 billion shopping centre in Nottingham, marking its first foray into Europe. And a consortium involving Multiplex and Lend Lease got the nod to spend $900 million building a new hallowed Wembley football stadium in London. Given that we lead the world in sport and our government invests more in sport than any other, it is heartening to know there are some spin off benefits for our business community. Multiplex has very close links with Kerry Packer so it would be interesting to know if the Packers helped swing the Wembley tender Australia’s way.

Australian Companies Generating More Than $200M A Year Offshore

Foreign Companies Generating More Than $200m In Australia Each Year