19 Facts About James Hardie

James Hardie Industries plc is a global building materials company and the largest global manufacturer of fibre cement products.

James Hardie was plagued by several asbestos-related scandals in the 20th century.

James Hardie emigrated to Australia in 1888 from Linlithgow, Scotland, and established a business importing oils and animal hides.

When James Hardie retired in 1911, he sold his half of the business to Reid.

Also in 2009, the US Internal Revenue Service alleged that James Hardie had not been in compliance with the US-Dutch treaty since it had been implemented in 2006 and claimed $US37 million in unpaid taxes plus $US10 million in interest and penalties.

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James Hardie currently operates a corporate office in Chicago, Illinois, United States and operates more than a dozen manufacturing plants around the world.

In 1988 James Hardie Industries made the largest donation ever made to an Australian public library when it gifted to the State Library of Queensland the meticulously developed and hugely significant Australian Library of Fine Art which was given as a bicentennial gift to the nation.

James Hardie nonetheless maintained that it had done everything possible to protect workers.

James Hardie had been structured as a parent company operating through subsidiaries since the 1930s.

Between 1995 and 2000, James Hardie began to remove the assets of these subsidiaries, whilst leaving them with most of the asbestos liabilities of the James Hardie group.

In 2001 these two companies were separated from James Hardie and acquired by the Medical Research and Compensation Foundation which was essentially created in order to act as an administrator for Hardie's asbestos liabilities.

However, the tax benefits which James Hardie expected to receive as a result from its move did not eventuate following the revision of tax laws in the United States in 2001 and later with the United States signing a new trade agreement with the Netherlands in 2006.

The MRCF sought extra funding from James Hardie and was offered $18 million in assets, an offer the MRCF rejected.

The funding shortfall became of increasing concern in 2004 as it became clear that eligible victims would miss out on receiving compensation after it was revealed that in March 2003 James Hardie had cancelled the partly paid shares that were intended to be a safety net for the fund.

In discussing the shortfall with the MRCF, James Hardie refused to accept further responsibility for the liabilities on the basis that the MRCF and James Hardie were separate legal entities.

Amongst other findings, it found that the actuarial reports commissioned by James Hardie which estimated liabilities at $286 million were inadequate because they used a financial model which made unfounded predictions on the value of investments held by Amaca and Amaba, the figures were subject to numerous unspecified conditions and they did not account for the effect of separating Amaca and Amaba from James Hardie.

However, the inquiry found that James Hardie was under no legal obligation to provide compensation.

In December 2004, James Hardie agreed to pay compensation to the victims of its products through a voluntary compensation fund.

In 2021, James Hardie was vindicated after a New Zealand court dismissed a lawsuit claiming Harditex cladding caused weathertightness problems in New Zealand homes.