Australia's Gina Rinehart raises offer for Kidman estate

Australia's richest woman Gina Rinehart and her Chinese partners have raised their bid for the country's largest private landholding, the Kidman estate. The new offer of 386.5m Australian dollars ($295m; £241.4m) comes after an all-Australian counterbid had topped Rinehart's initial bid of A$365m. Ms Rinehart's tie-up with Chinese firm Shanghai CRED hopes to overcome state concerns about foreign investment. Previous Chinese-led bids have been blocked over national security issues. Though Australian-led, the joint bid by Rinehart's Hancock Prospecting and Shanghai CRED would still need approval from Australia's foreign investment board. Should regulatory approval not be obtained, Ms Rinehart said she would buy the estate without her Chinese partners - removing any need for regulatory approval. The all-Australian counterbid - which includes four of the country's wealthiest cattle families - has offered A$386m and would also not require approval. The sale of the Kidman estate, which comprises farms the size of South Korea, has highlighted the concerns over the sale of Australian assets to Chinese investors. The landholding - with its 10 cattle ranches, a bull breeding stud and a feed lot covering 101,411 sq km (39,155 sq miles) in four states - encompasses about 1.3% of the Australian continent. Some of the farms are close to a government weapons-testing range at Woomera and therefore deemed to be too sensitive to go into partly foreign ownership.