Fran O'Sullivan: Fay playing 'local' card with Crafar bid

Sir Michael Fay's championing of local ownership is surprising given his past involvement in the sale of strategic NZ assets offshore. Photo / APN

Sir Michael Fay is clearly playing on nationalistic sentiment against the foreign ownership of New Zealand farmland to spruik his low-ball bid to acquire nine of the 16 Crafar dairy farms.

It is hard to credit that one of the great all-time floggers of strategic New Zealand assets into foreign hands - who also spent nearly a decade as a tax exile in Switzerland - is playing this particular card.

But the Herald on Sunday - which broke the exclusive story that a Fay-led consortium had "emerged as a white knight investor with $105.1 million for dairy farms that might otherwise be sold to China" - quotes Fay as saying, "I believe that retaining dairy farm land in local ownership is a key to maintaining long-term control of New Zealand's key export earner and also key to retaining our trading advantage."

Let's just note here that Kordamentha's Brendan Gibson had already said "no" to the Fay-led consortium's backstop offer, which was tabled about three weeks ago.

"We conveyed to Sir Michael and his advisers in a meeting on August 12 that the bid was not acceptable for a number of reasons including price," Gibson told the Business Herald yesterday.

Despite Gibson's refusal to entertain the obviously low-ball offer, Fay went public two days later.

By choosing to make his bid public, Fay must be hoping to leverage unease against selling any New Zealand farms to Chinese investors.

By indicating his consortium has already made an offer to Kordamentha, he is indicating to the Overseas Investment Office - and the Cabinet ministers who will ultimately decide the fate of the Pengxin bid - that a New Zealand-dominated bid is waiting in the wings if they decide that the Shanghai deal is too politically risky.

Interesting tactics.

The Crafar farms receiver is not going to go back to the market while the OIO is considering Shanghai investor Pengxin group's $200 million offer for the entire Crafar portfolio.

Kordamentha did, after all, accept the Pengxin bid, which was far higher than that tendered by other bidders like state-owned Landcorp, which is understood to have offered $150 million for the lot.

The price the Fay-led consortium has suggested is not going to pass muster with the Crafar bankers, who want to recoup as much of their $240 million exposure as possible.

But this whole episode confirms that Fay retains the hide of an elephant.

He is, after all, the New Zealand investment banker whose firms were integrally involved in the Cook Islands tax avoidance industry, which deprived the New Zealand exchequer of plenty of tax revenue during the 1980s.

His firms orchestrated the sale of Telecom to the American-led "baby Bell" consortium, were (at various stages) on both sides of the deal that ultimately resulted in NZ Rail being flicked to the Wisconsin Central-led consortium and was deeply involved in the fiasco that resulted in the sale of Bank of New Zealand into Australian hands.

All three of these companies were arguably strategic New Zealand assets, which many Kiwis thought should stay in local control and, in Tranz Rail's case, resulted in the New Zealand Government buying back the asset from Toll to ensure this country did ultimately retain a decent rail network.

Put that to one side - what Fay has always been adept at doing is sniffing the wind.

But the Fay "bid" will rattle the Government.

In Beijing yesterday, Trade Minister Tim Groser reflected how the China FTA has been a great success in the two and a half years since it entered into force. "It remains the only FTA that China has with a developed country," Groser told the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"Since the FTA entered into force in October 2008, New Zealand's trade with China has increased by 50 per cent. With total bilateral trade touching $12.8 billion in the year to June 2011, we are on track to meet the goal set by Premier Wen and Prime Minister Key in 2010 of doubling trade from $10 billion to $20 billion by July 2015."

The speech did not mention the thorny issue of Chinese investment in New Zealand. But there is no doubt it will have featured in his own discussions with China's top ministers.

In Pengxin's case it has hardly laid siege to the entire New Zealand dairy industry. Pengxin's messaging runs like this:

Pengxin has negligible expertise in dairy farming or dairy processing, which is why it says it wants to come to New Zealand to set up both aspects of the business - milk supply and a partnership with a local processor. It is basing its bid on the fact it knows China well and is extremely well connected there.

It believes it can develop a range of high value, dairy-based, branded consumer products such as infant powder and other health products to sell back into China.

The price that Pengxin is prepared to pay for the Crafar farms indicates it will have to be a long-term holder to make a decent return. Under the new OIO rules, Pengxin has to show that it will create added value for New Zealand through its ownership of the Crafar farms and also extra jobs for New Zealanders.

There is also the importance of precedent to consider. The Crafar farms are not the only big dairy parcels on the block: the South Canterbury Finance receivers are trying to sell farms in Dairy Holdings' block and Carter Holt has also been selling farms.

If foreign ownership is not allowed, the absence of competition will lower the price of farms. Good for Sir Michael and other cashed-up NZ investors - not so good for farmers who want to sell their farms.

One avenue the Government might want to consider is putting a cap on the amount of farm land under foreign ownership. This would enable farmers who are carrying considerable debt to trade their way out but stop too much falling into offshore hands.