Investment banker Mark Burrows sells Southern Highlands property Widgee Waa for $14m

A Southern Highlands property owned by legendary investment banker and green finance guru Mark Burrows has sold for about $14 million.

Known as Widgee Waa, the New South Wales property’s sale is being billed a bullish result — only one month after the off-market campaign to sell it was revealed by Domain, it has sold well above the expected $12 million to $13 million range.

Aggregated by Mr Burrows over decades, the 155-hectare property is one of the district’s largest land holdings. Its sale puts it among the region’s top results, topped only by the $15 million record set in 2007 by the 200-hectare property Comfort Hill in Sutton Forest.

Chris Meares of Meares & Associates and Ken Jacobs of Christie’s International were not available for comment on Saturday, but sources confirmed the sale for about $14 million late on Friday.

The highly fertile basalt soil pasture land was aggregated in the 31 years since Mr Burrows bought the first title in 1988 when he was head of iconic investment bank advisory buisness Baring Brothers Burrows. The property includes farming infrastructure, equestrian facilities and a manager’s cottage.

Mr Burrows, a former deputy chairman of Brambles, Telstra and the now defunct Fairfax Media, has become better known for his green finance expertise in recent years as a senior adviser to Macquarie’s Green Investment Group and on the Asian Board of The Nature Conservancy.

At the time the property was listed Mr Burrows said he was selling because he “didn’t need two farms in the Southern Highlands, and certainly not two of the largest land holdings”.

Mr Burrows lives at the nearby Sugarloaf Farm in Kangaloon. The property is another large-scale aggregation on which he has a developed a renowned 12-hectare garden.

At the time Widgee Waa was listed Mr Meares said the property was expected to sell for between $30,000 and $40,000 an acre. At $14 million it equates to about $37,000 an acre.

The buyer’s identity remains unknown, but the property was expected to draw interest from the many figureheads of corporate Australia who own locally, such as tech entrepreneur Mike Cannon-Brookes, fund manager Hamish Douglass, cattleman Theo Onisforou, Crown chairman John Alexander and former television boss David Leckie and his wife Skye.