The staggering wealth of richest people in NSW

The richest people in NSW have been revealed, including new names who have roared into the ranks of the wealthy elite. Read the full list.

Former rugby league star Adam MacDougall rockets into the ranks of The List - Australia’s Richest 250 for the first time this year, thanks to the huge success of his Man Shake business venture.

He earned economics and business degrees by studying while playing for NRL club Newcastle Knights, and also represented Australia and played State of Origin for NSW.

But his career off the field has been even more spectacular.

After retiring from rugby league in 2011, MacDougall started nutrition company Cranky Health with wife Belinda.

Adam Macdougall in his playing days for the Knights and when launching the Man Shake.

Its flagship product is the Man Shake meal replacement, and MacDougall has also written books about exercising and nutrition.

Pacific Equity Partners made a $400m investment in MacDougall’s business in 2022, and his overall fortune on this year’s edition of The List - Australia’s Richest 250, published today by The Australian, is $635m.

Newcastle-based MacDougall is joined on The List by young NSW entrepreneurs such as Jason and Elvis Bey, the owners of Sydney Tools (combined wealth of $600m) and Immutable co-founders James and Robbie Ferguson ($700m).

Sydneysider Brian White, the man behind the famous Ray White real estate brand, also debuts on The List this year, after financial accounts for his business were lodged with the corporate regulator for the first time.

White and his family’s fortune is estimated at $660m. The family also owns mortgage aggregator Loan Market Group, which had $1.bn revenue in 2023.

Here are the wealthiest NSW residents this year on The List:

1 Harry Triguboff, $26.01bn

Harry Triguboff

About two decades ago, Triguboff made the canny decision to keep and rent out some of the huge numbers of apartments his company Meriton builds every year.

That decision continues to pay off. Meriton’s annual profit dipped slightly in 2023 to about $290m, but its rental income from the almost 15,000 units it has on its balance sheet jumped 36 per cent to $660m.

2 Mike Cannon-Brookes, $22.92bn

Mike Cannon-Brookes (left) and Scott Farquhar. Source: Atlassian

Cannon-Brookes’ wealth rises with the surging share price of his NASDAQ-listed software business Atlassian, which he founded with Scott Farquhar in 2002 after the pair met at the University of NSW.

Many headlines about Cannon-Brookes in the past year have been about the confirmation of his split from wife Annie.

Although details about how the separation will work financially are yet to be announced, in recent years the pair have spent more than $500m on properties in Sydney and southern NSW.

3 Scott Farquhar, $22.65bn

Like Cannon-Brookes, Farquhar sells down a relatively small – but extremely lucrative – part of his stake every year in order to give Atlassian stock more liquidity. It means the pair receive hundreds of millions in cash annually, allowing Farquhar to make purchases such as the $130m mansion he bought with cash in Point Piper in 2022.

4 Cliff Obrecht & Melanie Perkins, $10.92bn

Cliff Obrecht and Melanie Perkins.

Richard White.

The clock is ticking on Canva’s plans to go public.

Perkins and Obrecht are pointing towards 2025 or 2026 for what would be one of the world’s most anticipated floats in recent years, but in February Canva completed a $1.5bn private share sale that gave some of its staff and backers a way to realise some of their paper gains. The duo maintain a large shareholding in Canva, which is valued at about $US26bn.

5 Richard White $9.72bn

White is celebrating 30 years in business with fellow Richest 250 member Maree Isaacs. The pair started logistics software firm WiseTech in 1994 when they began writing code for Australian freight forwarders. White had previously been a musician – he started his own business repairing guitars – and worked for several technology companies before founding WiseTech.

See the full list at www.richest250.com.au