Macquarie’s Paraway posts record profits

Sydney-based asset manager Macquarie Group’s land and livestock company Paraway Pastoral has posted record net profits in 2015.

Paraway Pastoral is owned by the Macquarie Pastoral Fund which closed on A$700 million in 2011. The company, which is wholly owned by the fund posted A$67.1 million ($51.54 million; €45.28 million) in net profits in 2015, nearly triple the A$23 million seen in 2014. The livestock-focused investment vehicle suffered overall losses in 2012 and 2013.

Paraway Pastoral’s properties have a capacity of about 180,000 cattle and 200,000 sheep.

In addition to a number of high-profile farmland acquisitions thought to be worth A$40 million between December last year and February 2016, the company sold the 9,990 square kilometre Walhallow station cattle ranch in Australia’s Northern Territory for $100 million, according to local media.

In February, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) banned Macquarie Agricultural Funds Management director Timothy Hornibrook from providing financial services for six years. According to the regulator, Hornibrook used a fake email address to gain sensitive information from a competing firm in 2011. Hornibrook was a director of MAFML between February 2010 and May 2014, when the Australian Financial Review first reported that Macquarie’s Agricultural Funds Management team had been accused of misconduct and ASIC began its investigation. As Agri Investor reported, a spokeswoman for ASIC said its enquiries are ongoing.

Hornibrook told Agri Investor in a 2014 interview: “The investors in our Pastoral Fund which closed in 2011 tended not to have specific allocations to meet, but were looking for ideas that worked relative to the existing investments in their portfolios. Those investors would definitely be recognised as early adopters of new investment ideas.”

Macquarie Group is an independent asset management institution and investment bank that manages specialist funds and ow assets in infrastructure, real estate, private equity and development capital. according to PEI Research and Analytics.

The Group’s asset management division has $355 billion assets under management, including 2.9 million hectares of farmland in Australia and Brazil and $1 billion in investor commitments to its livestock and row crops investment strategy, according to the company website.

As previously reported by Agri Investor, the livestock and land company relocated from Sydney to the city of Orange last year, be closer to its farm properties.