The largest landholdings in the common land bank. Governor Tkachev is the largest landowner in the world. Got sanctioned but survived

Kuban Governor Alexander Tkachev has long been called a feudal lord in Russia for his vast land holdings, and abroad they know firsthand about the endless farmlands of the owner of the Kuban.

For a number of years, the media have been quoting the words of a German journalist: "The columnist for the German Handelsblatt Matthias Brygman, who has been working in Russia for a long time, rightly calls the Kuban a feudal territory without civilized laws, and considers the governor of the Krasnodar Territory A. Tkachev not just the main, but the monopoly oligarch of the region." "And the American United States Energy Association believes that the governor of the Krasnodar region, Tkachev, is the largest landowner in Europe. And in the United States," says USEA head David Sweet, "there is not a single person who owns 200 thousand hectares of land." (according to 2015 data, Tkachev is one of the top five largest landowners in the world).

According to Rosreestr, the Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography, the cadastral value of Krasnodar land is the highest in Russia: 51,000 rubles per hectare (2012). It turns out that the land, the ownership of which is attributed to the governor's clan, is pulled at 10.2 billion rubles. According to other estimates, a hectare of Kuban arable land is worth half a million rubles: then the latifundia of the splendid family will already pull 100 billion rubles.

What kind of overwhelming work was this fortune amassed?

Alexander Tkachev was born in the Kuban village of Vyselki on December 23, 1960, in 1983 he graduated from the Krasnodar Polytechnic Institute, graduate school. And, having got a job at the Vyselkovsky feed mill, where his father, Nikolai Ivanovich Tkachev, was the director, became the chief mechanic with space speed. Then a new take-off: in 1986, Alexander Tkachev - first secretary of the Vyselkovsky district committee of the Komsomol. Having steered the district committee for four years, he successfully jumped off the sinking ship of the Komsomol, becoming the director of the "family" Vyselkovsky feed mill. And after the collapse of the USSR, he privatized this enterprise, creating on its basis CJSC "Agrocomplex".

Currently, the company includes 10 agricultural enterprises, 10 poultry factories, a feed mill, a mill, a confectionery shop, a groats plant, two butter plants, two dairies, two meat processing plants, a railway shop, a service station, a biolaboratory, an oil industry, two elevators, a powerful car fleet - 900 machines ... Moreover, there are over 800 pieces of equipment in the machine and tractor fleet. Subdivisions of the company are located in Vyselkovsky, Pavlovsky, Korenovsky, Ust-Labinsky, Slavyansky, Starominsky districts of Krasnodar Territory, in Krasnodar itself. By 2007, "Agrocomplex" already owned 82,390 hectares of arable land, and 8,200 employees worked for the company - a real agro empire! Which continues to expand even now.

The methods of its creation are also quite imperial, a number of regional and central publications have written more than once about a series of “hostile takeovers” using administrative resources. And in 2004, the Pravda-info resource published an analytical note, which said: “In 1999, with the assistance of the Vyselkovsky district administration and the ROVD, A.N. Tkachev. started buying land shares of the shareholders of CJSC "Agrocomplex". As a result, all arable land (tens of thousands of hectares) became the personal property of the Tkachev family. "

All this did not prevent the newly-born landowner from declaring himself a furious communist - until 2003 (Tkachev was a member of the Communist Party)... And how else was it to make a career under the "daddy Kondrat", the governor of the Krasnodar Territory Nikolai Kondratenko? The successful capitalist latifundist first acquired the mandate of a deputy of the regional Legislative Assembly, then twice was a deputy of the State Duma. Until in 2000 Kondratenko made a “knight's move”, naming Tkachev as his successor, and he himself migrated to the Federation Council (then “moved” to the State Duma, then again to the Federation Council, where he sits to this day).

"By the method of blackmail and threats."

When Tkachev came to reign in Krasnodar, the administrative resource started working to its fullest. Here are excerpts from the above-mentioned analytical note on the situation in the Krasnodar Territory (it was reprinted in September 2004 by a number of other publications): “An analysis of the situation that developed after A. Tkachev was elected head of the Krasnodar Territory administration testifies that A.N. Tkachev has been making efforts during all three years of his governorship to create an extensive structure to establish his (personal) control over financial and information flows in the Krasnodar Territory. Using the administrative and power resource, it carries out measures (by the method of blackmail, threats of physical harm) to replace the unwanted A.N. Tkachev of the heads of local government administrations, especially prospective wealthy regions of the region, as well as the seizure of the most profitable enterprises of the region through the bankruptcy procedure ... Enterprises, farms, banks, which are structures of A. Tkachev and 1st deputy A.A. Remezkov are taken under personal control, are actively used by them for personal enrichment, as well as for the uncontrolled flow of capital into the shadow economy and foreign banks. "

One of such special operations is the establishment of control over the Kristall sugar factory in the village of Vyselki in 2005. It was described in detail by the Internet portal of the Southern region YUGA.ru. In a short summary, the events developed as follows. At first, the plant got into the habit of inspectors - sanitary and epidemiological station, environmental protection, firefighters. Tax officers and prosecutors came for them, then the district prosecutor's office opened cases of administrative violations against CJSC Kristall and its officials: non-compliance with environmental and sanitary-epidemiological requirements when handling production and consumption waste, violation of water use rules, implementation of activities unrelated profit-making, no license. The Vyselkovsky District Court instantly ruled to suspend production at the sugar factory due to environmental pollution and, of course, non-observance of safety rules at workplaces. The owners of the plant realized who was behind the raid, and the board of directors of the Russian Sugar company even turned to President Putin for help. Having received no response, he realized that resistance was useless and expressed his readiness to sell Kristall. Then it was a matter of technology: when a successful plant went bankrupt, it was sold. And the new owner, as a number of publications and news agencies reported in March 2006, was CJSC Agrocomplex, whose chairman of the board of directors Nikolai Tkachev, father of the governor of the region. But then “Russian sugar” for some reason hastily announced that it had sold “Kristall” not to “Agrocomplex” at all, but to a certain LLC “KRISTALL-Agro”. Why such conspiracy? In the database of the Unified State Register of Legal Entities (USRLE) it appears that this LLC is registered at the address of Agrocomplex: Vyselki, Stepnaya Street, 1. However, according to the System of Integrated Disclosure of Information (SKRIN), KRISTALL-Agro was almost liquidated not immediately after that purchase. Only for the implementation of which, apparently, was created? Some detective!

Aleksey Klimov, the former head of the Vyselkovsky district and the ex-chairman of the collective farm, told Ogonyok magazine: when he tried to prevent the expansion of the Tkachev empire, seven criminal cases were instituted against him at once. Is it any wonder that Agrocomplex quickly became the largest agricultural holding in the Kuban? And in 2009 he absorbed the last large independent agricultural producers of the Vyselkovsky district proper - ZAO Niva and ZAO Rassvet. That allowed "Agrocomplex" to increase the area of \u200b\u200barable land by 20 percent. For the uninitiated, the takeover caused bewilderment: the enterprises were very profitable and only an idiot could voluntarily sell them. Well, if it is voluntary. And empires have no time to wait, they need to expand: “You can't stop. Forward and only forward. Whoever is late today will not catch up tomorrow, ”Nikolai Ivanovich Tkachev, chairman of the board of directors, told reporters.

Affiliate.

Formally, the state official Tkachev cannot take part in the clan's business. However, after examining the list of affiliated persons placed in the official information section of Krayinvestbank OJSC, we find: since December 30, 2004, “Alexander Nikolayevich Tkachev belongs to the same group of persons that owns the bank”. Krayinvestbank, in turn, was the founder, co-founder and owner of a considerable number of interesting assets. Among them: LLC "Sailing Center of the South", LLC "Vostok Chernomorskiy", LLC "Diapazon", LLC "Foliant" and LLC "Universal", CJSC "Invest-Plus". The bank, with which Governor Tkachev was affiliated, is listed as the main shareholder of CJSC Kuban Financial Company. "Kuban Financial Company", in turn, owned 30% of the shares of CJSC "Film Studio" Anapafilm ". Kuban Managing Company CJSC has a license to manage mutual investment funds and pension reserves of non-state pension funds. Its founders are Krayinvestbank OJSC, Kuban Financial Company CJSC and Invest-Plus CJSC. The Kuban Financial Company also has 95% of the shares of a certain Kuban Development Group LLC: according to SKRIN, the head of the latter is Roman Aleksandrovich Batalov, the governor's son-in-law. At the end of 2006, the governor left the list of affiliates of Krayinvestbank. But the family's business has not gone anywhere: there is a dad, a brother, a son-in-law, a niece ... Nikolai Tkachev, by the way, according to SKRIN, also officially runs the Kuban Pheasant Autonomous Institution of the Krasnodar Territory.

Wealthy relatives.

22-year-old Anastasia Tkacheva, a recent student, niece of the Krasnodar governor (his brother Alexei is a deputy of the Russian State Duma) At her young age, she turns out to be a ruble billionaire. In serious financial documents, the name of Anastasia Alekseevna Tkacheva appeared in 2007 - she was then 19 years old: a young business student was listed as the owner of 30% of the assets of a certain LLC Masterstroy. This same "Masterstroy" has already built three 16-storey buildings with 752 apartments on Fadeev Street in Krasnodar, three more 16-storey buildings for 941 apartments in the Moskovsky microdistrict, and now it is completing six more 16-storey buildings for 1344 apartments there. At 22, owning 30% of twelve 16-storey buildings with 3,037 apartments is not bad at all!

That's not all: the governor's niece is listed as a co-owner of Yuzhny Pipe Plant LLC (10% of shares). The plant is among the suppliers of Olimpstroy: it makes polymer pipes and components for them. Another supplier of Olimpstroy, LLC Pipe Insulation Plant, is located at the same production site: Anastasia Tkacheva also has a 10% stake there. The strategic plans of the LLC include "creation of the largest regional center for pipe insulation, storage and transportation." Another girl owns 22.5% of the shares of the Yugptitseprom group of companies, which is comfortably located in the ancestral nest of the Tkachevs clan - the village of Vyselki. Yugptitseprom is a large poultry processing enterprise in Russia that continues to increase production.

But the most powerful in business is Roman Batalov, the husband of the governor's eldest daughter, Tatyana. He is the son of Krasnoyarsk entrepreneurs Alexander and Larisa Batalov. As soon as the young people had a wedding, Roman Batalov became a deputy of the regional Legislative Assembly and the first deputy chairman of the Committee on Property and Land Relations. The press reported that Batalov is engaged in deputy affairs in his free time from his main work - he is also the deputy director of Krasnodargorgaz OJSC. But now his name is not on the list of the management of the company. But in the SKRIN database it was found that Roman Alexandrovich Batalov is listed as the head of six firms: Kuban Development Group LLC (capital investments in property), Turinvest LLC (providing intermediary services related to real estate), two Bramos Group LLC - in Moscow (retail trade in clothing) and Krasnodar (management of financial and industrial groups and holding companies), LLC Intercomplex (preparation for the sale, purchase and sale of its own real estate). Roman Batalov also manages the liquidated Megaset-Kuban Management Company LLC (electrical installation works).

Roman's “Kuban Development Group” was widely developed: it was founded about five years ago, and already six dozen “daughters”. Regarding LLC Intercomplex, it is known that among its founders there is a certain JSC City-Park - on shares with the Cypriot offshore company (36%), the State Property Fund of the Krasnodar Territory (8%) and several municipal organizations of the region. By the way, Roman Batalov also manages to work as a deputy director of OJSC Sochi-Park: this OJSC is the responsible executor of the tourist facility of the 2014 Olympics, at his disposal so far 35 hectares in the center of Imeretinka, and in total there will be 76.7. The park plans to build more than 40 attractions, shopping galleries, restaurants, a fiery alley with 42 torches, an artificial lake with dancing fountains and a light show, the Bogatyr Fortress thematic complex, a children's playground, a cinema, a market square with a trade fair, a tasting room of the Kuban wines. And after the Olympics, hotels with 595 rooms and 900 apartments, 150 shops and restaurants will appear there. Investments in Sochi-Park will amount to 16 billion rubles. No wonder they say in the Kuban: "If you want to become a big businessman, marry the governor's daughter."

Top 50 landowning companies in Russia

Ak Bars Holding, Agrosila Group and Krasny Vostok Agro were recognized as one of the largest landowners in Russia according to the BEFL consulting company. In its rating, Ak Bars Holding took the fifth place among Russian latifundist holdings with a land bank of 0.5 million hectares. In total, the largest landowners in Tatarstan own over 1.1 million hectares of agricultural land, or a quarter of the republic's agricultural land. Read more in the material of Realnoe Vremya.

Three Tatarstan holdings are among the top 50 landowners of Russia

BEFL has published an annual survey of major agricultural land owners in Russia based on April 2017 data. It includes a rating of 50 Russian companies, which control a total land bank of more than 12 million hectares.

The five leaders, as noted by the BEFL experts, have remained unchanged. As in the previous year, the first places were taken by Russian agricultural holdings and food producers Prodimex (790 thousand hectares), Rusagro (670 thousand hectares) and Miratorg (644 thousand hectares).

The Tatarstan holding "Ak Bars" of Ivan Yegorov lagged behind a little - in its asset 505 thousand hectares of land located in Tatarstan and the surrounding regions. According to this indicator, he took fifth place in the federal rating. And Ilshat Fardiev's Agrosila Group with a land bank of 300 thousand hectares and Airat Khairullin's Krasny Vostok Agro, which owns 268 thousand hectares, were in the second ten. The first took 11th place in the ranking, the second - 16th. Nevertheless, in total, they own over 1.1 million hectares of agricultural land in Tatarstan, or a quarter of the republic's agricultural land.

The Tatarstan holding "Ak Bars" of Ivan Yegorov lagged behind a little - in its asset 505 thousand hectares of land located in Tatarstan and neighboring regions. Photo abh.ru

These data indicate the continuation of the process of consolidation of agricultural land by large owners. “2016 was an extremely productive year for large agricultural holdings in terms of increasing their land bank,” says the BEFL survey. - Statistics show that the area of \u200b\u200bfarmland owned by legal entities continues to increase. Each of the companies, the leader of the rating in 2017, already has more than half a million hectares of land under control. "

"Agrosila" is gaining weight, and "Krasny Vostok" is "drying up"

Agrosila Group is actively striving for this milestone, the only Tatarstan agricultural holding that has managed to increase its land plantations. Over the past year, he managed to increase the land bank by 28%, according to BEFL experts. Therefore, Agrosila Group ranked fifth in the adjacent BEFL rating in terms of growth rates of land assets. According to some reports, the company was buying land exclusively in Tatarstan, investing up to 2 billion rubles. "This year the agricultural holding plans to implement several large investment projects worth 4 billion rubles," the company's press service told Realnoe Vremya. - At the end of 2016, the revenue of the Agrosila holding amounted to 31 billion rubles. " Will the company continue to buy land? Rather yes than no.

In contrast, Ak Bars has suspended the purchase of new land - over the past two years, the company has not acquired a single extra hectare. As follows from the dynamics of changes in the land bank among the leaders of the rating, the peak of Ak Bars transactions fell on 2013-2014. During this period, the state holding increased its assets from 316 to 505 thousand hectares, and the aggregate income of the agricultural block for 2014 amounted to 9.1 billion rubles, an increase of 28%. Since then, more than 40% of the holding's proceeds are provided by the agro-industrial complex, which includes such large enterprises as Avangard LLC, Agro-Kama LLC, Zelenodolsk Milk Processing Plant LLC, and Ak Bars Poultry Complex OJSC.

Airat Khairullin's Krasny Vostok Agro, which owns 268 thousand hectares, is in the second ten. Photo by Maxim Platonov

15 years have been consolidating land assets

The consolidation of land assets by private agricultural holdings took place over the past 15 years. As Realnoe Vremya was told in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the Republic of Tatarstan, in 2003, with the adoption in January of this year of the federal law "On the turnover of agricultural land", which allowed the free purchase and sale of land, about 10% of agricultural land in the Republic of Tatarstan was transferred to private ownership. ... The first "latifundists" then were the agro-industrial groups "Tatfondbank" and "Tatagroprombank" that were liquidated this year, as well as then called OJSC "Krasny Vostok", which initially took ownership of 65 thousand hectares of land in Zelenodolsk, Alkeevsky and Verkhneuslonsky districts. Now the holding "Krasny Vostok Agro" manages the cultivated areas in the Trans-Volga zone of Tatarstan.

In conclusion, we add that in 2016 the gross agricultural output in Tatarstan increased by 5% to 238.6 billion rubles, and the profit amounted to 7.4 billion rubles. Among investors, the highest share of gross agricultural output was noted just among local latifundists - Krasny Vostok Agro OJSC, Agrosila Group CJSC, Ak Bars Holding Company, AgroInvest Management Company LLC, APK Prodprogramma LLC "And LLC" Archa ".

The largest owners of agricultural land in Russia as of April 2017, thousand ha

Louise Ignatieva

The cost of all land controlled by the twenty largest landowners in Russia amounted to 471.7 billion rubles, or $ 7.3 billion.

Oleg Deripaska, brothers and and ... They own land plots worth billions and tens of billions of rubles are among the twenty largest latifundists in Russia.

For example, the Linnik brothers' Miratorg company owns 1 million hectares. But in terms of cost, they are only in third place. The lands of Miratorg, the largest meat producer in the country, are located mainly in the Central Federal District, where the price of an agricultural hectare is almost three times lower than in the Krasnodar Territory. Carrying out a full cycle of production of meat products, it is also engaged in the production of feed, and also develops a chain of Burger & Fries restaurants and branded butcher shops.

Earlier, the media reported that the Linnik brothers are relatives of the wife of the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Medvedev (nee she was named Linnik). But Viktor Linnik publicly denied this information.

Got sanctioned but survived

“The richest people of the country did not plan to engage in agriculture: residential quarters, shopping centers, cottage settlements and logistics parks soon grew on the lands of former state and collective farms,” the newspaper reports.

But agriculture, into the development of which the state annually poured hundreds of billions of rubles, has become a highly profitable business and for this reason the land owners included in the rating are now using them for their intended purpose.

According to Forbes calculations, in crop production, for example, the profitability of sunflower exceeds 33%, for sugar beets and grain this figure is close to 30%, and in the southern regions the profitability of wheat can reach 50%. It is not surprising that people with serious money came to the agro-industrial complex.

According to Forbes experts, the government's agricultural policy is actually formed by lobbyists of large agricultural holdings. However, there is a trap in this state of affairs: many agricultural holdings are credited with state banks and can be nationalized at any time.

The five largest landowners in Russia own as much land as is equivalent to the size of all of Moldova. Or Belgium. Or Switzerland.

And the Kremlin authorities wish you a good mood !!!

The 5 largest agricultural holdings have concentrated in their hands so much land that a country the size of Moldova will fit on it. Who created these companies? And who paid for their records?

Less than 100 thousand hectares is not considered

The largest landowner in Russia, according to the rating for 2019, which was published in May, for the first time was Miratorg. In total, the consulting company BEFL counted 44 holdings in the country that manage lands exceeding 100 thousand hectares, and 12 more agricultural enterprises, which have 100 thousand hectares.

The first five are especially impressive, in relation to which the word "most" is repeated many times (see the infographic).

Miratorg is the largest producer of beef and pork in the Russian Federation, Prodimex - sugar, EkoNiva - milk. Other prizes are held by Rusagro and Agrocomplex. And the co-owners of three holdings - Vadim Moshkovich, Alexander and Viktor Linniki, Igor Khudokormov - are included in the Forbes rating as the richest agricultural businessmen.

Who has the most pigs in Russia?

Latifundia, uniting many former collective and state farms, began to take shape in Russia 15 years ago, when agriculture began to turn into a profitable business. Huge fields and pastures lay desolate. It took money to bring them back to life. The farmers themselves had no money. But they were in the people who extract oil and ore, manage banks, import food. It is not surprising that in the end it was they who collected the largest allotments, buying up shares of former collective farmers and entire agricultural firms.

The Linniki twin brothers got rich on the supply of meat from Holland and Brazil. Igor Khudokormov and Vadim Moshkovich rose on Ukrainian sugar. Other major Russian latifundists include the Volgo-Don Agroinvest holding, created by the former first vice president of Lukoil, Sergei Kukura, and the Step company, owned by AFK Sistema of billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov.

If you study the family ties of the founders of other agro-giants, you will find high-level officials. The most famous example is “Agrocomplex im. NI Tkachev ”, for the first time entered the top 10 of the BEFL rating in the years when its founder Alexander Tkachev worked as the Minister of Agriculture of the Russian Federation. The land bank of this Kuban company (that is, all land acquired for ownership or lease) from 2016 to 2018 increased by 1.4 times. The acquisitions were carried out using loans from the largest state banks.

At the same time, other agro-oligarchs are also rapidly expanding their holdings. According to BEFL estimates, the volume of agricultural land in the hands of legal entities increased by 38% from 2012 to 2018. The government has been actively engaged in these years to reduce imports and increase food exports. Purchases of most products in European countries that had announced anti-Russian sanctions were banned, and state support for domestic producers was strengthened. And the first in line for subsidies and soft loans were large companies. By 2012-2014. they have already managed to get the best land and build their own processing plants. Who else can you help, if not the strongest and most experienced, if you need a quick result?

For Miratorg, the Bryansk Regional Duma even specially changed the local law, which allowed one company to own no more than 35% of the land in one administrative district. The rate was raised to 50%. Now Linnikov has the largest herd of black Aberdeen bulls in the world, 629 thousand heads, and pigs are the largest in Russia.

Russified foreigners

The story of the German Stefan Duerr is generally a plot for cinema. 30 years ago he came to a student practice in a collective farm near Moscow, where he worked as a pig inseminator. He married a Russian girl. And in the end, having sold his farm in Germany, he bought the first 5,000 hectares near Voronezh, Kursk and Orenburg through the Russian "daughter" of his foreign company. Russian legislation prohibits foreigners from owning land. But various legal schemes allow this limitation to be circumvented. And among the 56 largest agricultural holdings in the BEFL rating, at least 4 have foreign origins: Kazakhstan, France, Turkey, USA.

But the company, founded by an enterprising German, is now purely Russian. Former Voronezh Governor and current Deputy Prime Minister for Agriculture Alexei Gordeev personally asked Vladimir Putin to grant Stefan Duerr Russian citizenship. And after the presidential decree was issued in December 2013, the business of EkoNiva went ahead by leaps and bounds.

The cost of gigantism

The results of the bet on large domestic business are on the shelves. Russia has completely stopped importing raw beet sugar, and its dependence on overseas meat has sharply decreased. But experts also see the downside of success: the cost of production in agricultural holdings is too high. If the borders are reopened to import, our pork, beef, milk and even sugar will not be competitive.

“The question arises: at what price did large companies feed the country? - asks Natalya Shagaida, director of the RANEPA Center for Agri-Food Policy. “They received huge subsidies, and the prices that buyers pay for their products are higher than if the same products were imported. It turns out that the growth of diversified holdings is paid for by all consumers and taxpayers in the country. It’s not fair. It is only possible to create special conditions for companies with high production costs temporarily. And during this time they must learn to produce competitive products.

Such a high concentration of land among several dozen owners, as happened in Russia, is trying to prevent in other countries. This is believed to impede the development of small agribusiness, the foundation of sustainable agriculture. In the United States and the European Union, government subsidies are deliberately limited to large farms. And the Russian experience shows that the industries in which the share of farm production is high are the most competitive. In 2016, for example, farmers provided 29% of grain harvest and 32% of sunflower harvest versus 23% and 31.4% of holdings. And Russia is the leader in the export of these products.

At the same time, sooner or later, the companies-latifundists will stop developing, - continues Natalya Shagaida. - They will not be able to reach the level of the leaders of the world agro-industrial complex, which are engaged in the processing of agricultural raw materials, and give production to independent agricultural firms and farmers. It is too difficult to effectively manage a huge economy, including factories and hundreds of thousands of hectares of land. "

Few people know that the director Baz Luhrmann did not accidentally invite the actress Nicole Kidman to play the refined lady Sarah Ashley in the film "Australia". After all, the actress is not only his favorite: the role of a wealthy aristocratic landowner adequately reflects Kidman's current state.

According to a New Statesman studyThe family of the Australian woman who moved to Hollywood is today the eighth largest private landowner in the world and the first, except for the monarchs. Its possessions stretch across the entire Green Continent, and the total area owned by the Kidmans exceeds the area of \u200b\u200b90 countries in the world and is 24 million acres, or approximately 9.71 million hectares. Only one of the plots belonging to the clan (it houses the world's largest cattle farm Anna Creek), exceeds the territory of such a rather large European country as Belgium.

But the most amazing thing about the state of the family - that the founder of the dynasty, Sir Sidney Kidman, made it practically from scratch. The son of a poor farmer-emigrant from Adelaide, born in 1857, at the age of 13 ran away from home to become a cattle driver: then all his property was a one-eyed mare and five shillings. But soon the teenager realized that he was bored of being a simple hired worker and went into business. His first venture was a butcher shop in New South Wales. Things were going well, and soon Sydney was already into the horse trade. And at the end of the 19th century, at the age of 29, he had already acquired his first large plot of land in Owen Springs. It was with him that the Kidmans' land empire began.

As Sydney himself said, he always had a dream: to make his possessions stretch across the entire Australian continent - through the central arid territories, from one cattle farm to another, along river beds: this would allow her to drive livestock across the entire continent and deliver it as close as possible to to the buyer. Obsessed with this idea, the businessman began to buy up farms and adjacent land in Central Australia one after another and eventually acquired more than 100 such plots.

As it turned out, it was a wise decision.... Huge spaces gave the livestock business flexibility: if a drought struck at one end of the continent, Kidman simply moved the herds to another place, while his small competitors, who did not have sufficient land resources, suffered losses and one after another and went bankrupt. By 1935, Sidney Kidman had become one of the richest people in Australia and its largest landowner (he sarcastically said about England that he would not mind turning one of the British Isles into his personal "cattle paddock").

But despite all my fortune, until the end of his days he kept the habits of a poor farmer. He could easily afford to buy his own train, but instead he always traveled the country in second class - and that, he said, only because "there is no third class in Australia."

At the time of Kidman's death in 1935 he owned about 3% of Australia. Today, Sydney's landholding empire is about three times smaller than it was eighty years ago. But this in no way prevents the fourth generation of Kidmans from successfully fighting weather adversities and repelling the attacks of developers and speculators on their vast properties.

Family business last year, part of which is owned by one of the most beautiful and stylish women in Hollywood, has collectively earned more than $ 2.55 million in profits. This may not be very much for a modern high-tech company, but more than enough for an investor who invests money in the most valuable resource on the planet - earth.

To be more precise, formally neither the Kidmans nor anyone else in Australia owns the land. This whole country belongs to Queen Elizabeth II, as well as Canada, the British Isles and many other territories. But really, of course



Largest private landowners in the world (data from The New Statesman)


The largest private landowner in the world is Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain - she owns 6.6 billion acres or 2 billion 670 million hectares, about a sixth of the earth's land mass.

King of Saudi Arabia Abdullah owns 547 million acres or 221 million hectares. Officially, he owns the land in the interests of his people, and he received it as a gift from the Lord.

To the current Pope Benedict XVI, who is the formal administrator of the Roman Catholic Church, owns 177 million acres, or just over 71.5 million hectares.

Australian landowners ranked 8 out of 24 in The New Statesman's largest private landowners ranking. In the vast majority of cases, these are the same families of former former livestock breeders, like the Kidmans.

At the same time America's largest private landowner, media tycoon Ted Turner, owns a modest 2 million acres or 809 thousand hectares (24th in the world) - a mere trifle compared to Australian competitors.

 

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