Japanese giants reap $9b Australian dividend harvest
Big Japanese investors in Australia’s resources sector sent more than $9 billion of dividends back to Tokyo in the past year, but issued a fresh warning about the risk posed by government interventions in commodity markets.
The bumper financial results published last week by Australian subsidiaries ofMitsubishi and Mitsui came after a year of rare political activism in Australia by the Japanese business community, which spoke up on numerous occasions against government intervention in gas, coal and energy markets.
Japanese ambassador Shingo Yamagami warned in September that Japanese investors’ “trust” in Australia had been shaken by higher coal royalty rates in Queensland, while the leaders of Idemitsu and Mitsui made rare public comments against government interventions in NSW coal and federal gas policy respectively.
High prices for coking coal drove a 24 per cent surge in full-year profits for the Australian registered company Mitsubishi Development Pty Ltd, which owns a 50 per cent stake in BHP’s best Queensland coking coal mines.
Mitsubishi Development paid just over $4 billion of dividends to its Japanese parent for the year to March 31, up from $3.85 billion last year and a far cry from the $143 million dividend paid for the year to March 2021.
The payout is believed to be the biggest dividend that Mitsubishi Development has repatriated to Japan since it was named in the 1968 state legislation that unlocked development of coal mining in Queensland’s Bowen Basin.
Mitsubishi Development did not respond when asked if it had ever paid a bigger dividend, but corporate records show that between 2010 and 2021 the company never paid more than $1.64 billion of dividends in a single year.
Mitsubishi Development said in its
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