Expat Rich List billionaire Michael Hintze buys $9.4 million Gooniwindi farm
The expatriate Australian billionaire philanthropist Sir Michael Hintze has added the Goondiwindi district property, Boolarwell to his east coast farming portfolio.
The South Tallwood property totalling 7800 hectares cost $9.2 million.
Talwood is 450 kilometres west of Brisbane, between Goondiwindi and St George.
Bought from the Turner family, it is a mixed cropping and irrigation farm using precision agriculture technologies.
The grazing farm in the Boonarga district was pioneered by the Gunn family the 1890s.
It was Sir Michael's first known purchase since last year when he bought a 609 hectare Wee Waa farm in the New England, NSW district.
But the London-based hedge fund founder who has amassed one of Australia’s fastest-growing farm portfolios, has in recent times appeared to have an elevated interest in Queensland property.
His other recent purchases in Queensland include a $2.35 million acquisition of a 166 hectare sugar cane farm which took his Horseshoe Lagoon holdings to 572 hectares costing $9.3 million.
His Australian freehold acquisitions total around 60,000 hectares since 2007 through his private pension fund, MHPF, which has spent about $135 million on the freehold land along with an estimated $10 million plus on water licence purchases.
Hintze founded CQS Management, a London-based hedge fund with assets of $US11.5 billion, in 1999. The CQS Directional Opportunities Fund has been ranked by Bloomberg at number three on its list of the 100 top-performing hedge funds, returning nearly 36% net of fees last year.
He was raised in Sydney after the family arrived from China as ethnic Russian refugees in 1953. He holds a BSc in Physics and Pure Mathematics and a BEng in Electrical Engineering, both from the University of Sydney. He also holds an MSc in Acoustics from the University of New South Wales, an MBA from Harvard Business School and received a Doctor of Business and an Honoris Causa from the University of New South Wales.
Prior to beginning his career in finance, he served for three years in the Australian Army as a captain in the Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. The hedge fund chief, who spent 12 years at Goldman Sachs in roles such as head of European emerging markets, left Sydney in 1980 for Salomon Brothers in New York.
In June 2013 he received a knighthood in recognition of his substantial charitable contributions to the arts in the United Kingdom.
On the weekend's annual Sunday Times Rich List, Sir Michael was given a £1,055 billion net worth, ranked 92nd richest UK resident, up £155 million from 95th place in 2013.
Hintze, whose wealth had been previously estimated by the rival Forbes magazine list at US$1.6 billion, has said he was not just looking for capital gain from the properties. He says he seeks solid returns on production.
His purchases have been driven by the view that rural land in Australia represents good value in light of the strong global demand for “soft commodities”.
Hintze's buying spree began when he spent $12.5 million for a Breadalbane, NSW property in July 2007. The Hintze portfolio has been accumulated and managed by Richard Taylor, a director of Growth Farms Australia.
''I'm not a farmer, but I do the numbers. It's got to make money,'' Hintze once said.
More recently he noted: “I wish the dollar were lower as it would be easier in farming.”
He added Australia was expensive even for dining.
“The days when there was an arbitrage in saying, ‘Don’t worry I’ll buy you a meal when I come to Australia and you buy me one when you come to London.’ It’s gone the other way around,” Hintze quipped.
In March this year Queensland's Valuer-General released 1 October 2013 annual land valuations for properties in the Goondiwindi Regional Council local government area.
They showed Goondiwindi Regional Council area's land values had decreased by 10.5% overall since the last valuation issued in 2012.
"Generally the market for primary production land throughout the local authority has shown a decline, with sales showing large reductions in values primarily throughout the Brigalow Belt and the Traprock country.
"The exception to this trend is the coolibah country associated with the Macintyre and Weir Rivers, the irrigation country along the Macintyre Brook and Dumaresq River, the red soil box country at Talwood and the mixed farming country in the Inglewood district where there has been no change in unimproved value levels."
Feature photo: Stock.