Another Fed president calls for rate hikes next month; P2P lenders risk going bust in China; ECB criticised for "going too far"; US housing market stalls; UST 10yr yield 1.91%; oil & gold down; NZ$1 = 67.2 US¢, TWI-5 = 70.8

"I like the smell of cattle in the yards,”
And other quotable quotes...

‘I’ve always had an interest in agriculture, cattle and the land,’ says James Jackson of Australian Rural Capital. James Jackson is a man with a fight on his hands. As chairman of Australian Rural Capital, Jackson has emerged as a key player in the drawn-out bidding war for the S Kidman & Co pastoral empire. But it wasn’t always this way.

The expansive outback properties are a world away from the rarefied world of London and New York stockbroking, where Jackson spent many years. But they aren’t all that far from western Queensland, where Jackson’s family had cattle interests — alongside a number of butcher shops in Brisbane, where Jackson boarded as a young student.

“I’ve always had an interest in agriculture, cattle and the land, I worked on farms as a youngster, did agriculture as a subject at school and worked as jackaroo and agent prior to university, I like the smell of cattle in the yards,” Jackson says. “What I like about it is that it’s a very dynamic process which obviously relies on the weather, the farming or animal husbandry practices, skills and game plan you can bring to the table. “It has a very tangible product at the end of it and I feel as though over time you can witness the tangible benefits of your own input and work in improving and creating a better outcome.”

After a short stint working as a livestock agent for Dalgety Winchcombe, Jackson returned to Brisbane to study commerce, and began working at the venerable firm JBWere. He jumped ship, moving to Britain where he took up a position at Potter Warburg, now part of UBS, before spending the rest of the decade in New York. “My recollection is that the long lunch was still in play in London at that time. I was fairly young and when I moved to New York. It was a very different environment,” he says.

“The people involved in the ­financial world in New York were a lot younger, the workload was significantly higher, but the rewards were significantly greater. “Their capital markets are the most sophisticated in the world with the greatest amount of technology being employed as well, so it was seeing the world from the cutting edge.”

It was this experience that pushed Jackson, on his return to Australia, to take a small stake in Maryborough Sugar. “I felt there was an opportunity in agribusiness and agriculture in Australia which at that time was fairly under researched and under-represented on the stock market,” he says. “I felt that Australian agriculture, from what I had seen elsewhere, was actually a competitive business and Australian farmers were globally very efficient.” Maryborough began to expand, scaling the business substantially before becoming MSF Sugar and eventually being acquired by Thailand and Asia’s largest sugar producer Mitr Phol.

That led to Jackson moving on, and with the help of Stephen Chapman of Barron Partners, moving to listed the investment firm Tidewater, which has now become ARC. ARC’s biggest investment has been in Namoi Cotton, but its biggest target is Kidman. The fund has partnered with Shanghai Pengxin, the presumed frontrunner in the $370 million race for more than 11 million hectares of cattle properties.

A decision is expected next month. “The thing about investing in agriculture is that it’s a long-term game. We’re long-term committed,” Jackson says. “We’ll be raising long-term committed capital that will be primarily equity-based — and we see that being a good fit for something like Kidman.”

Fund of funds
King of kings...

Hey Neven911, where have you been the past little while? Missed you commenting here, hope you are back.
What are your thoughts on the oil industry today?