More mining giants fall to foreign raiders

The dollar is going to keep falling if Australia is eventually completely foreign owned. The mooted bids for Normandy Mining and WMC and the recent sale of Pacific Dunlop’s brands business are a further tragedy for the Australian corporate sector.

Crikey can only come up with 41 Australian-based companies that are turning over more than $200 million a year offshore from exports or foreign-owned operations.

This week we have seen Southcorp’s appliance business sold to a US company for more than $500 million.

Aussie icons that went offshore this year include:

* Normandy Mining which will be picked up by either Anglo or Newmont.

* UK group Catalyst picked up Just Jeans.

* big chunks of the HIH personal lines business which went to German insurer Allianz.

Pacific Dunlop’s brands business such as Bonds, Berlee bras, Dunlop, Slazenger and Julius Marlow which went to a consortium led by CVC Asia Pacific.

* The entire Australian tobacco industry is now foreign owned after BAT mopped up the 40 per cent of BATA owned by the public.

Philipino brewing giant San Migel snapped up Boags.

* Email was taken over by Onesteel and Smorgon Steel and its whitegoods business, which includes brands such as Hoover, Dishlex, Westinghouse, Simpson and Kelvinator was sold to Electrolux of Sweden for about $450 million.

There are well over 200 foreign companies generating annual revenues of more than $200 million a year out of Australia.

These companies all ship their profits home each year and this puts a downward pressure on the currency because we ain’t got much in the way of foreign profits being shipped back to Australia.

And now it looks like both Normandy Gold and WMC are set to fall into foreign hands, leaving just a rump of Australian-owned mining companies.

If there is one industry where Australia should dominate the world, it is mining, but our management have somehow lost about $10 billion hedging their commodities over the past 5 years and become completely discredited.

So now the Australian mining industry is set to largely become a branch office. It’s all just too tragic.

The full scale of Australia’s woeful corporate performance is here for everyone to see in this exclusive Crikey list of internationally successful Australian companies and foreign companies in Australia who are generating more than $200 million a year.

41 Australian Companies Generating More Than $200M Overseas

200 Foreign Companies Generating More Than $200m In Australia Each Year