Michael Hintze buys Victorian farm Cheviot Hills for $10 million
The billionaire hedge fund manager Sir Michael Hintze has acquired his first Victorian farming property.
The historic Cheviot Hills in the Western District cost more than $10 million.
Sir Michael, a BRW rich-lister with a fortune estimated at $1.3 billion, is the founder of London-headquartered $12 billion global fund manager CQS.
His MH Premium Farms now owns a portfolio of more than 20 rural properties in Australia spanning more than 70,000 hectares across the east coast.
He has spent about $80 million, starting near Goulburn in NSW then adding sugar farms in Queensland.
The latest farm purchase near Penshurst covers 1950 hectares.
It had been owned by the Hutton family since 1852.
Cheviot Hills, to be managed by Growth Farms Australia, will be used for sheep production and will give the MHPF portfolio, which spans lamb, wool cattle, broad acre cropping of cereals and oilseeds, cotton and sugar, greater climatic diversity.
It is the first Hintz purchase since last July, when MHPF bought Deltroit Station, a 2573-hectare grazing property in the Gundagai district of NSW, which will be used primarily for lamb breeding and finishing.
The sale of Cheviot Hills was negotiated by CBRE's Duncan McCulloch and James Beer, as well as Kerr & Co's Robert Claffey.
Cheviot Hills, which includes a renovated four-bedroom bluestone homestead, was run by fifth-generation farmer Tim Hutton as a mixed-grazing enterprise, including Hereford cattle and Corriedale sheep.
Mr Hutton is a descendent of Scotsman David Hutton, who arrived in the Western District town of Portland in 1844 and took out a lease on land at Mount Rouse, later establishing Cheviot Hills.
The sale of Cheviot Hills follows the recent sale of blue ribbon Western District property Banongill Station, a 6880-hectare cropping and grazing estate near Skipton, to US pension fund-backed Laguna Bay Pastoral Company for more than $30 million.
Other owners in the vast Western District region include Rifa Salutary, the Australian arm of China's Zhejiang Rifa Holding Group, which bought 2420-hectare Blackwood station near Dunkeld from the Ritchie family in February 2014 for about $14 million.
MH Premium Farms (MHPF), the Australian agricultural investment group of Hintze purchased Deltroit, the Gundagai district farm July 2015.
