Australia’s Patinack Farm to be put on market

Financially embattled Australian mining tycoon Nathan Tinkler has decided to put his entire Patinack Farm operation on the market, including more than 1,000 Thoroughbreds and farms in New South Wales and Queensland.

Tinkler is offering Patinack through Australia’s Magic Millions auction firm and the financial services company Ernst & Young, according to published reports in Australia. Last year, Patinack dispersed about 400 horses and sold Group 1-winning stallions All Too Hard (Black Caviar’s half-brother) and Onemorenomore as part of Tinkler’s efforts to regain financial control. Last November, Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum’s Kildangan Stud in Ireland sued Tinkler for alleged non-payment of stud fees.

Tinkler, a former mining electrician, made his fortune in the mining business and is the largest shareholder in Whitehaven Coal, in which he has a 19.4 percent interest. That stake, valued at more than $1 billion Australian last year, was estimated to be worth half that after a steep decline in coal prices. The company’s share price hit a four-year low Tuesday after word of Patinack’s sale.

Tinkler’s advisors said last year that the young magnate had no plans to leave racing, but in a statement issued Tuesday Tinkler said: “As I am spending for time overseas, I do not have the time to manage the business.”

Tinkler burst onto the racing and sales scene in 2008, when he spent $19 million in Australian currency for 59 horses at a Magic Millions yearling sale shortly after selling his stake in the Macarthur mining company for $440 million. He went on to purchase that year’s Deauville yearling sale-topper, Tall Poppy, for 770,000 euros.