The piggery companies of the Prime Minister, Paul Keating, made a total of $3.2 million in losses last financial year, according to returns lodged with the Australian Securities Commission.
The losses follow $1 million in losses the previous financial year.
The piggery companies are now worth minus $2.3 million compared to an estimated $1.36 million in 1991. Audits of the 1991 accounts for the companies said they relied on the continued support of the company’s bankers, the Commonwealth, and on shareholders for their continued existence. It would be fair to say that given the 1992 profit that situation continues.
However, the losses and consequent reductions in shareholders’ equity do not seem to translate into Mr Keating’s family company, Pleuron Pty Ltd.
The piggery group has the following companies: Brown and Hatton Group, Brown and Hatton Wholesale, Brown and Hatton Rural, Jensay, Labvac and Olympia Sales. The main business is a piggery in Scone NSW and refrigeration equipment. The companies are in an $80 million joint venture with a Danish company, Danpork. The joint venture hopes to employ some 200 people and sell pork into Asia, using Danish capital and Australian cheaper feed and land.
Above the piggery companies sits Euphron Pty Ltd which is half owned by Pleuron Pty Ltd, the Keating family company.
Pleuron shows its loss for the year at $1072. The company is worth $473,366, according to the annual return, but it is difficult to see how that can be anything but a paper amount given the losses and negative shareholders’ equity of the subsidiary piggery companies.
This financial year the companies were exempt proprietary companies for the whole year. This means that auditor does not have to be appointed. It also means the accounts are much less detailed.
The accounts show that there has been some straightening out since the companies came under fire last year in the Senate and in the press. Last year the accounts and company reports were revised and then audited and revised again. They showed different amounts in different way at different times, especially a debt to former Minister for Tourism John Brown. That amount is not shown in the 1992 accounts, because that amount of detail is not required.
The accounts have corrected the bizarre situation in Euphron whose shareholders’ equity jumped from about $800,000 to $8.4 million in 1991, meaning that the Keating family share was some $4.2 million on paper. The equity for Euphron is now put at $861650.
The best performer in the group was Brown and Hatton Rural which turned in a profit of $1.9 million. However, that was eclipsed by losses elsewhere in the group.