Ryan Stokes warns SGH is looking to take investment offshore after Albo’s tax changes, energy and IR policy
SGH boss Ryan Stokes says the Albanese Government’s recent tax overhaul adds to a broader policy environment which is making Australia lose its investment attractiveness.
Leading businessman Ryan Stokes has warned investment and capital risks going offshore thanks to the Federal Government’s tax overhaul, warning it will “punish aspiration” and adds to existing policy uncertainty in energy and industrial relations.
SGH chief Mr Stokes, speaking on Thursday at the company’s investor day in Sydney, took aim at proposed tax changes announced in the Budget last week, saying the conglomerate would increasingly look elsewhere to invest capital.
Federal Labor’s plans to abolish the general 50 per cent capital gains tax discount in particular has attracted the ire of many business owners and investors across the country, who have argued it disincentives entrepreneurship.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.“This is not tax reform, it’s a higher cost of deploying capital in Australia at a moment when the global capital pool is more mobile than ever,” Mr Stokes said.
“It does punish aspiration, and it generally ignores productivity.
“On top of that, we have the industrial relations direction, energy policy and planning settings that have been tightening for a number of years.”
Mr Stokes said rising unionism in the economic engine room of Australia — the Pilbara’s iron ore mines — was “absolutely” a concern.
Mining giants BHP and Rio Tinto are increasingly diversifying beyond Pilbara iron ore mining, with BHP in particular calling out unionism in the sector as a dampener on investment attractiveness in WA.
“If you think about where you’ve got leading companies in Australia [BHP and Rio] looking to deploy capital in other global jurisdictions, that should be a much greater concern to all Australians,” he said.
“You can’t make them invest here . . . ultimately you’ve got to make it attractive.”
He indicated that while Australia was SGH’s core operating centre, the conglomerate would increasingly eye other regions to invest in.
“There’s a shifting landscape around deploying capital in Australia . . . we now need to broaden how we think about employing capital from a geographic perspective,” Mr Stokes said.
“It doesn’t change the lens we have around sector dynamics, but it means we just need to be a bit more open in our views of looking from a risk perspective and a notional capital return requirement looking a bit more broader than just Australian geography.”
Mr Stokes had previously ruled out a major overseas expansion h but that appears to have now changed.
SGH — which includes building materials supplier Boral, equipment hire firm Coates, and mining and industrial machinery company WesTrac — has built a war chest that is enabling the conglomerate to pursue mergers and acquisitions.
It delivered a net profit of $518 million for the 2026 financial year and a generated a 32 per cent rise in operational cash flow to $1.1 billion, which reduced leverage to below its targeted range.
The better-than-expected deleveraging provides “greater balance sheet capacity to pursue value-accretive growth”, the company stated in February.
Originally published on The Nightly
