From The Land
Shares in Macquarie Group – the corporate flagship of Macquarie Bank and its raft of subsidiaries – are no longer a market favourite, but that doesn’t seem to faze investors in Macquarie Pastoral Fund.
From a 2008 high of $66 in May, Macquarie Group shares have plunged to below $20 as the global financial crisis raises questions about the investment bank’s debt – and fee-driven business model.
But that model, honed to a high pitch with Macquarie’s highly-geared infrastructure funds, is seemingly on a different planet to Macquarie Pastoral Fund and its operating arm, Paraway Pastoral Company.
Paraway is evolving more along the lines of some of the old-time conservative land companies that dominated the eastern Australian pastoral scene for much of last century.
Like Scottish Australian Company, Australian Estates, Dalgety, and others of that era, it is building a strategic chain of pastoral properties to give investors low-risk access to Australia’s livestock sector.
Full story in The Land, March 5.