With Huon Aquaculture signing its listed life away at $3.85 a...

With Huon Aquaculture signing its listed life away at $3.85 a share, the question is what does West Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest do with his 7.7 per cent stake?
If Forrest was a normal financial investor, he could probably take a 55 per cent gain and swim off into the sunset, happy to have made $11 million in about six weeks on an unlikely salmon bet.

But Forrest and the Tattarang Agrifood Pty Ltd entity that bought the stock, isn’t a normal financial investor. The iron ore magnate is collecting $1.5 billion in dividends every six months from Fortescue, and trying to re-invest a substantial portion of that via Tattarang.
Just to deal with that weight of capital, Forrest has to to become one of the most active and entrepreneurial players in Australian capital markets and, led by his chief investment officer John Hartman, some of their recent investments have been very successful.
Their 55 per cent return in Huon in less than two months (should they accept the bid) shows they know how to make money in a very different way to most family offices, who hand cash to fund managers for far smaller returns.Hartman and his team swooped on private equity fund RCF’s stake in Noront at 15¢ a share, getting control via equity and debt before launching a full takeover at 31.5¢ in June.
Last week, BHP stormed over the top and bid 55¢, delivering the WA billionaire an $80 million paper gain and $30 million royalty, meaning they have made north of $110 million for a six month investment.
Bankers trying to get close to Tattarang say they are very active but are vastly different to most family offices of PE rivals. Tattarang dislikes competitive processes and data rooms, as shown when they acquired RM Williams last year, and have varied taste, taking stakes in bombed out names like Ridley, Huon and nickel miner Mincor, but also doing well out of growth names like telco Swoop which is up 150 per cent since listing earlier this year.
So will Forrest take the money and run from Huon suitor JBS (advised by Rothschild & Co), and BHP? Who knows, but watch this space as Forrest doesn’t like playing second fiddle in life.