AACo’s golden director insurance cover unveiled
AACo was spending $3 million annually insuring its top brass against claims about their own actions, the most expensive item on an insurance shopping list for the cattle giant, according to leaked documents.
The directors and officers cover, which also protects companies from shareholder lawsuits, dwarfed premiums for protecting hard assets such as $495,000 on outback-station buildings and plants. It was being spent as AACo froze dividend payouts.
AACo herds were uninsured when flood struck, killing 43,000 head. Glenn Hunt
The insurance list – detailed in a proposal for work and revealed today by The Australian Financial Review – is typically a closely guarded secret for corporations and provides an insight into how businesses divvy up insurance bills.
It illustrates the skyrocketing cost of directors cover but also raised questions about whether ASX-listed AACo had overinsured its board. The company maintained it was appropriately insured.
The list further indicates AACo had still not purchased any insurance for cattle for disasters such as floods, a year after almost 43,000 head died in flooding in 2019, costing more than $42 million. But insurance and agriculture industry sources said a lack of such protection was not unusual given the often prohibitive cost of such cover, which can potentially be obtained from some insurance syndicates overseas.
Brisbane-based AACo, partly owned by billionaires Joe Lewis and Andrew Forrest, owns almost 1 per cent of Australia’s land mass and has more than 430,000 head. It sells high-end wagyu under brands such as Westholme.
But AACo has also faced investor cries to pay dividends after 15 years of none. The company most recently blamed the dividend drought on needing money for
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