Old Mount Bundey Station, Sold Plus R.M. Williams Ken Cowley sued $100 million.
Receivers are pursuing Mr Cowley, 81,
Mr Gray said the Harrower family planned to use the property to keep stock on feed, closer to Darwin.
Old Mount Bundey Station, south of Darwin, was bought by Tony and Julie Harrower of Dorisvale Station, near Katherine, for an undisclosed price
Vendor Barry Coulter.
The sale of the 384 square-kilometre pastoral lease
Agent Andy Gray from Territory Rural said its close proximity to the Darwin Port made it a very attractive investment.
"It's about 60 kilometres from the Stuart Highway, the driveway into the property, which makes it about 100 kilometres from the Darwin CBD," he said.
"It's been very well developed by the owner over a long period of time.
"And of course, a very valuable asset is the bitumen frontage that Old Mount Bundey has."
Mr Gray said the Harrower family planned to use the property to keep stock on feed, closer to Darwin.
"Effectively that will be for his sale cattle, to be grown out there, so he can access the market when he wants," he said.
In a walk-in-walk-out deal, the sale included 400 Brahman breeders, a mango plantation and farm equipment.
Former RM Williams chairman and News Corp boss Ken Cowley (right) has been sued for allegedly mismanaging a farming company that went bust owing nearly $100 million.
Receivers are pursuing Mr Cowley, 81, and five other directors of the RM Williams subsidiary Agricultural Holdings for compensation and damages, alleging irresponsible purchases during the global financial crisis.
The deals at the centre of the Supreme Court case involved sprawling farms in two states and a $30 million arrangement to offset News Corp's carbon emissions.
The receivers, PPB Advisory, alleged in court documents Mr Cowley and other directors paid too much for properties, assumed an unrealistic cattle price and failed to account for the severity of the financial crisis.
The six men are defending the receivers' court action and have denied breaching their duties.
A long-time lieutenant to Rupert Murdoch, Mr Cowley headed the board of RM Williams when he became the first chairman of its farming business in 2009.
As part of a deal to set the company up, Agricultural Holdings owned six south-west Queensland properties known as Mirage Plains and their water rights, bought the year before for $15 million.
Agricultural Holdings soon bought two vast Northern Territory cattle stations, Labelle and Welltree, for a combined $48 million, plus a chicken farm. To help purchase the Labelle station, the company entered into a $30-million deal to give News Corp 640,000 tonnes of carbon credits a year for five years.
Later, it received $10 million in taxpayer funding to create what would have been the world's largest carbon farm.
The company was founded six months after the Australian government was forced to guarantee bank deposits for three years to ward off panic about the global financial crisis.
The receivers alleged Mr Cowley failed to exercise care as a director because he did not obtain fresh valuations or financial modelling after the crisis deepened in 2008 and 2009.
They said the company had been cash-strapped, lacking the resources to make large purchases and then invest in them properly.
"[Agricultural] Holdings faced an extremely difficult task in raising any significant debt and/or equity finance", in light of the crisis, the receivers said. Holdings allegedly relied on an annual cattle price increase of 12 per cent when the price had declined as much in the year before.
Mr Cowley has filed a defence denying the financial modelling was too old.
As for valuations, he said the property firm Herron Todd White gave the same $55 million estimate for the cattle stations before and after the purchase, in April 2008 and August 2009. He said the company had been bound by agreements to do all it reasonably could to buy the cattle stations.
Agricultural Holdings folded in July 2013 and receivers sold off the farms for millions less than the business had paid. The receivers said the company was left with "no substantial assets" and "very significant debts". It is not known how much money they are seeking from the directors.
Mr Cowley served on the News Corp board for 32 years and ran the publisher's Australian arm for 27. Two years ago he sold his half stake in RM Williams, the bootmaker he took over from his friend Reginald Murray Williams in 1993.
Mr Cowley has previously described Agricultural Holdings as a "very responsible and discreet company".
"It was a very good and, I think, responsible decision to create an agricultural company," he said in 2014. Fairfax Media called Mr Cowley several times and left a voice message but did not hear back from him.
His fellow former directors – chief executive Hamish Turner, managing director David Pearse, Christopher Jemmett, James Tucker and Bob Tucker – have filed separate defences denying breaches of their duties.
Source (SMH)
