Adelaide loses News Corp head office status but regains Elders and keeps Mayne Pharma
The News building, next to the Grosvenor Hotel, on North Terrace, Adelaide, where Rupert Murdoch started his News Corporation Global empire in the 1950s.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
Multinational mass media company News Corporation was incorporated in Adelaide until 2004 – a consequence of Rupert Murdoch building his empire from a controlling interest in the afternoon tabloid The News in the 1950s.
But Adelaide has regained the head office of Elders Ltd – with South Australian roots back to 1839 – after it survived the national takeover ructions of the 1980s. Also a takeover victim, Mayne Pharma, the latest guise of F.H. Faulding & Co., started in Adelaide in 1845, still has its head office in Salisbury.
News Limited was created in 1923 in Adelaide with the controlling interest was bought by The Herald and Weekly Times. In 1949, Keith Murdoch took control of the Adelaide News and his son Rupert inherited a controlling interest in the afternoon tabloid in the 1950s.
Murdoch flew to Adelaide to attend annual meetings of News Corporation, created in 1979 as a holding company for News Ltd, until its head office was moved to the USA in 2004.
Elder Smith Goldsborough Mort Limited opened its new corporate head office in Adelaide in 1964 and for the new next few years was paying 10%, 11% and 12% dividends as its handled 28% of the Australian wool clip. It moved into banking and mining before it fell to a takeover in 1981/82 by John Elliot and the Henry Jones team to become Elders XL.
Expansion of what became an Elders Pastoral division nearly 500 branches throughout Australia with a staff of 4000. In the turmoil of more takeovers and a stock market crash, Elders Pastoral was renamed Elders Ltd and sold out of the Fosters Group in 1989.
Elders Ltd has revolved back to a purely agribusiness, dropping off links to banking, forestry, automotive and rural services. Its head office is in Grenfell Street, Adelaide. Elders' expansion in 2017-18 included buying NSW horticulture supplier Ace Ohlsson and Kerry & Co Livestock, the largest privately owned independent livestock business in south-west Victoria.
Mayne Pharma is the latest guise of F.H. Faulding & Co, the Adelaide pharmaceutical wholesaling and consumer health products company going back to 1845. The company was divided and went through ownership changes since it was bought by Mayne Group in 2001.
Mayne Group demerged the business into Mayne Pharma and Symbion Health. In 2007, American global pharmaceutical and medical device Hospira (later bought by Pfizer) took over Mayne Pharma whose oral pharmaceutical division was bought in 2009 by Melbourne based-Halcygen Pharmaceuticals.
Through it all, Mayne Pharma head office and a manufacturing plant remained at the 13ha Salisbury site that was bought by F.H. Faulding in 1983.
