The vast, flat plains of Tandou Farm span an ancient lake bed in far western NSW, a world away from the sleek boardrooms of London and New York.
But in those boardrooms, a bare-knuckle fight is under way to determine who takes control of the sprawling agricultural enterprise.
The real prize is not land but water - $36 million of permanent water rights that could be liquid gold for the company in the years ahead.
Australia's rural water market, one of the few in the world open to foreign purchasers, is turning over billions of dollars a year. As the company's latest annual report acknowledges: ''In recent times water has substantially increased its profile as a stand-alone investment class.''
The New Zealand corporate raider Sir Ron Brierley's Guinness Peat Group already has nearly 28 per cent of Tandou, while Britain's Ecofin is sitting on nearly 20 per cent and the US Water Asset Management just over 13 per cent.
But it was a controversial deal involving another swag of water rights - struck between Tandou and the federal and state governments nearly two years ago - which made the company the plum prize it is now.
At the time Tandou was struggling. The vast property near Broken Hill was in the grip of drought and burdened with debt. It had made a $8.8 million loss despite selling wineries and its 2007 report revealed that there was not enough water to put in cereal or cotton crops.
Then came a windfall. In late 2008 the Rudd and Rees governments announced they were buying $34 million worth of water licences from Tandou to secure more water for the environment.
However, it emerged that Tandou had hung onto its higher-yielding licences and sold the two governments ''supplementary'' licences, which only allow water harvesting after intermittent flood events.
The state Liberal MP Michael Richardson slammed the purchase as ''blue moon water … only ever available to Tandou after high rainfall and flood events every 10 years or so''.
This week Tandou's chief executive, Guy Kingwill, confirmed to the Sydney Morning Herald that the company had not got a drop of water from its supplementary licences since 2002-03.
Even more puzzling was how the sale figure to the federal and state governments had been calculated. The company's own books valued its total water rights - including the higher security water rights - at $33.5 million in 2007. Yet after selling the supplementary water licence, the company advised the stock exchange its remaining water licences were still worth more than $30 million.
Mr Richardson said these discrepancies suggested ''the real value of the supplementary licence was $3.5 million, just 10 per cent of the price paid for it''. Mr Kingwill rejects this, saying the supplementary licence had been hard to value before the government offer because there was ''no awareness of a willing buyer''.
''It's not transferable like your high security [water] and other licences … we went in and asked what they would pay, and that's what they came up with.''
The deal made hay for Tandou's investors. The share price shot up, Tandou paid off its bank debt with the governments' money, and is now making good returns from the higher security water it kept.
''Tandou [is] focused on growing the company's water operations and establishing
a water trading model aimed at delivering consistent returns from its valuable and diversified water portfolio,'' its latest report states.
But buying supplementary water for the environment is ''silly,'' says Lin Crase, a La Trobe University professor of applied economics, who questions the whole deal.
''You would hope the people purchasing realise it will yield very little in all but exceptional circumstances. And you have the problem of getting it meaningfully to an ecological site and using it to bring environmental benefits.''
The federal Water Minister, Penny Wong, has said not much NSW high security water has been offered to her government in buyback tenders.
Email a friend