From bar tsars, mining magnates and fashionistas, who are the wealthiest people in Queensland? 2023’s rich list has been revealed
The Sunshine State remains a haven for billionaires adding two more over the past year. Although most of Queensland’s rich-listers are well known, here is our wealthy list for 2023, including some who like to stay under the radar.
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The Sunshine State continues to be a haven for the country’s wealthiest with two more billionaires added to the state’s rich list in the past year.
Although the majority of Australia’s 139 billionaires live in Victoria and New South Wales, 15 registered Queensland addresses in 2022-23, up from 13 in 2021-22.
Nine of the country’s top 100 richest people now live in the state but only mining mogul Mineralogy’s Clive Palmer, made it onto Australia’s top 10 wealthiest list.
Palmer is still Queensland’s richest, increasing his stash from $18.35 billion in 2022 to $20.4 billion over the year and clawing his way up the scale from seventh place to the nation’s fifth wealthiest.
The state’s next big moneybags is QCoal’s Chris Wallin, who nearly doubled his wealth from $1.89 billion last year to come in as the country’s 32nd richest with accumulated wealth of $3.22 billion.
Wallin had a big year posting a $582 million profit in June after record coal prices and raking in $300 million in dividends from his privately-owned company which has interests in four coal mines in Queensland’s Bowen Basin.
Newcomers to the Queensland billionaires club were Kim Cannon, who was ranked the country’s 125th wealthiest person with $1.08 billion.
Cannon is the founder of one of Australia’s biggest non-bank mortgage lenders, Firstmac and also owns a Brisbane high-rise office block.
Another newcomer to the state’s top wealthiest, although not yet a billionaire, was Maree Isaacs, who has been invoicing and licensing director and manager with Brisbane’s WiseTech for more than 35 years, starting in September 1987.
Being a billionaire is nothing new to Hancock Prospecting’s Bianca Rinehart, who has a registered $2.88 billion, she was not included in Queensland’s list last year.
Other regulars to grace the Queensland billionaire list include property developer and former furniture retailer John van Lieshout whose wealth rose from $2.56b to $2.7 over the year.
Pub chain owner Bruce Mathieson held his position as Queensland’s third wealthiest, building on last year’s $2.05 billion to register a total wealth of $2.9 billion.
Here is our list of Queensland’s richest in 2023 including those who often go under the radar:
STUART GILES AND CATHY REID: EPIC PHARMACY
$535m ranked 241
Down from $543m in 2022
Stuart Giles and his wife and long-term business partner Cathie Reid are getting back into pharmacy management services, starting up a management division via their Arc31 family office. The couple was the driving force behind Australia’s largest comprehensive cancer care provider, Icon Group.
But they exited in 2021 after majority owners QIC and Goldman Sachs sold the business to Swedish private equity firm EQT for $2.5 billion.
Mr Giles was also a general partner and advisory committee member overseeing HEAL Partners Growth Fund. He was also a major shareholder in the Australian Premier League T20 cricket competition.
After establishing the Icon national footprint in 2011, he played a key role in driving international expansion.
He stepped down as founding chairman in 2020 to focus on his family office and philanthropic investments but remains a significant shareholder in the business.
Cathie Reid and the couple’s children Sam, and Sascha, are still involved with the philanthropic interests at Epic Good Foundation, which focuses on gender equality and indigenous health.
In 2020, they had a net wealth of $550 million.
BOB SHARPLESS: SPRINGFIELD CITY GROUP
$560 million ranked 240
Bob Sharpless and his business partner Maha Sinnathamby were the masterminds behind Australia’s largest masterplanned community in Australia, the Greater Springfield Development in Ipswich. In 2019, Springfield City Group was inducted into the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame in recognition of their vision in establishing Springfield as Australia’s first privately-constructed city. In 1992, Sharpless along with Sinnathamby, bought 2860 hectares in Ipswich for $7.9 million. They pushed to get parliament to pass a rezoning bill to allow adequate infrastructure to be built in the area in 1997. Ever since, their vision has grown and is now home to more than 50,000.
ROBIN MURPHY AND FAMILY: CANSTRUCT
$564 ($523m) ranked 228 (243)
Under the leadership of Robin Murphy, Canstruct began its first major business ventures in Papua New Guinea in the 1960s.
Murphy is proud the company operates in some of the most demanding environments in the Pacific and remote regions of Australia.
It even built $1.6 billion facilities at Nauru Detention Centre for the Australian Government.
As Canstruct continued to grow and take on bigger and more complex projects, the company expanded from a family-based business to now employing more than 500 staff and contractors.
Murphy also has extensive property holdings.
SCOTT HUTCHINSON: HUTCHINSON BUILDERS
$598 ($677m) ranked 227 (186)
Poor construction sector markets continued to plague Scott Hutchinson, the boss of the nation’s largest privately-owned builder, Hutchinson. It was another “rubbish” financial result in 2022, when the business reported a profit of $21.2 million in the year to June 30, compared to $27.7 million the previous year. Tight labour markets, supply chain issues and rising costs of materials kept profits down.
Company revenue hit $2.67 billion in 2021 from projects including a $260m office tower at Ann St, Brisbane and the billion-dollar West Village redevelopment in the city’s West End.
The family business was started in 1912 by John (Jack) Hutchinson, who clinched a deal to build a new kitchen for the Queensland government at Fort Lytton.
TREVOR ST BAKER
$605 million ($1.31b) ranked 219 (100)
The electric vehicle sector is still highly charged but the past year wreaked havoc with Trevor St Baker’s battery technology, which lost some of its market power after soaring in 2021-22 when it boosted his fortunes to more than $1 billion. St Baker’s Tritium suffered. Last year, St Baker turned his hands to two new holdings, the ASX-listed battery technology company Novonix, which has surged in value, and electric vehicle charging firm Tritium, which listed in the US. He also owns the $50 million St Baker Energy Innovation Fund along with interests in power stations and fuel supply development businesses while also being director of the St Baker Energy Trust and chair of Sunset Power International.
He is founder and deputy chair of ERM Power Limited, which is where a large part of his fortune comes from.
ERM Power, is the third-largest electricity retailer, and was taken over by Shell in 2019. St Baker’s wealth has grown rapidly since his humble beginnings in the Queensland electricity utilities sector in the 1960s and 1970s.
He worked on building Queensland’s first power station planning department in 1971 and its first Energy Resources Division in 1975.
GRAHAM TURNER: FLIGHT CENTRE
$614 million ($564m) ranked 211 (224)
Post Covid, things have taken off for Graham Turner, affectionately known as Skroo. His predictions came true that Christmas flights would be chaos as holiday fever grew and that showed in his fortunes rising.
His Flight Centre travel agency business, which he started with pals Geoff Harris and Bill James, weathered the pandemic and has now officially come out the other side.
After 50 years, Turner is still in management. He does not have time to help out his wife Jude, who runs her own prestigious Spicers Retreat eco-lodge business.
Before Flight Centre, Turner and his two co-founders ran Top Deck Travel in London in the 1970s.
TERRY PEABODY: TRANSPACIFIC; CRAGGY RANGE
$639m ($620m) ranked 210 (208)
Terry Peabody made his fortune from the waste industry and his Transpacific company which he set up after moving to Australia from the US to work on the Snowy Hydro Scheme in the 1960s.
He sold Transpacific after it listed in 2013 and then set up Craggy Range in 1998 in New Zealand.
He wanted to create a long-term legacy and so established a 1000-year trust which means the winery will not be sold for a long time.
PHIL USHER: PHILIP USHER CONSTRUCTIONS
$692 ($624m) ranked 202 (203)
Philip Usher started his property business in 1987 and since then it has grown in leaps and bounds, building units, high-rises and CBD apartments.
In August, the construction giant announced plans to develop a 220-unit retirement village in Holland Park West, southeast of Brisbane’s CBD.
According to The Australian, the business has almost $500 million in assets on its balance sheet, including a substantial pastoral business encompassing about 1.2 million hectares of cattle properties across five Queensland stations.
MAREE ISAACS: WISETECH
$716 million ranked 186
Maree Isaacs has been invoicing and licensing director and manager with WiseTech GlobalWiseTech for more than 35 years, starting in September 1987.
It was a massive jump in the share price of her software business WiseTech, which pushed her into the rich list this year joining four others from the company she helped found with billionaire Richard White in 1994. Since it was floated on the ASX in 2016, wiseTech has gone on to become one of the most successful floats in Australian business.
MICK POWER: BMD
$787 million ($778m) ranked 182 (161)
BMD was a shining light in the construction industry last year nearly doubling its net profit to almost $40 million from $1.4 billion in revenue. Queensland rich-lister Mick Power handed over the reins of his billion-dollar construction company he founded in 1979 to his son Scott in 2020.
At the start, Power and his wife often worked 12-hour days, six days a week with the company making a profit of only $800 in its first year.
But since then, BMD has grown into one of Australia’s largest privately owned engineering design, construction and land development contractors with both Mick and Scott at the helm.
Power named the group using the first letters of names of family members. It now has an annual revenue of about $1.55 billion.
CON MAKRIS AND FAMILY: MAKRIS GROUP
$813m ($835m) ranked 170 (156)
Con Makris moved to Queensland in 2017 from Adelaide and since then has been selling down his commercial property portfolio, even though he still owns Marina Mirage.
Con and the wider Makris family were named on The Australian’s “Richest 250” list as having a net worth of $1.11bn in 2021 which dropped this year to $813 million.
Last year, he announced plans for a $500 million revamp of its Gold Coast assets including a hotel, retail and dining space and some waterfront residences.
The company also owns the Oracle Boulevard dining and commercial precinct.
He sold the Hallett Cove Shopping Centre for $71 million in 2020 and also offloaded an apartment in the Palazzo Versace at Main Beach for a reported $6 million.
But he has retained other substantial assets on the Gold Coast and shopping centres in Adelaide and Melbourne.
Makris arrived in Adelaide from Greece aged 16 and started buying properties while running takeaway chicken shops before moving into shopping centres.
PETER HUGHES: HUGHES PASTORAL GROUP
$850m ($626m) ranked 167 (202)
Cattle king Peter Hughes and wife Jane saw massive leaps in their family fortunes over the past year, adding on more than $200 million. Hughes made a strong investment buying the Victoria River District cattle stations Riveren and Inverway for about $100 million last year.
In 2021, Hughes cut the most valuable deal in the country for a single pastoral holding when he snapped up the 438,000ha Miranda Downs station in the Gulf of Carpentaria for a mere $180 million. The couple made their fortune grazing purebred Wagyu beef from their 160,000ha pastoral empire at Tierawoomba station, about 100km inland from Mackay in central Queensland.
It is the country’s largest wagyu herd and totals more than 130,000 head of cattle across the five stations of the Georgina Pastoral and Hughes Pastoral businesses.
KEVIN SEYMOUR: SEYMOUR GROUP
$879m ($950m) ranked 163 (140)
One of Queensland’s wealthiest property tycoons Kevin Seymour has transformed parts of Brisbane with his Seymour Group’s commercial and residential projects.
He’s best known for developments such as Queens Plaza and MacArthur Chambers.
He started out in property development on a $380,000 block in Victoria St, West End in 1976.
But he has also turned his hand to reinventing an old car yard site into a $600 million urban village in Newstead in Brisbane’s inner east.
Seymour also has stakes in a mortgage lending business, and oil and gas exploration projects in regional Queensland.
DENIS WAGNER: WAGNERS CONSTRUCTION
$1b ($1b) ranked 155 (130)
Denis Wagner is the name behind the construction dynasty that built Toowoomba’s Wellcamp Airport. The state government paid $48.8 million to Wagner Corporation to help build the Wellcamp quarantine centre and another $149.7 million to rent it back for 12 months. The company was founded by the Wagner family in 1989 and floated on the ASX in 2017.
Its holdings fell over the past two years after a $27 million cement business slump as projects failed to materialise.
The Wagner family owns stakes in the listed group and Wellcamp Airport, which opened in 2014.
The private Wagner Corporation owns the airport and has other assets, including quarries and rural residential property land holdings.
TREVOR LEE: AUSTRALIA COUNTRY CHOICE GROUP
$1b ($1.03b) ranked 137 (124)
Billionaire beef baron Trevor Lee, who is married to fashion guru Keri Craig, owns the meatworks operation Australian Country Choice.
In August last year, it announced it was considering moving its Cannon Hill operations to NSW after a fight broke out about two new businesses moving into the same Rivermakers precinct.
The family business, led by the billionaire, launched a legal appeal arguing the proposed businesses would be located in an industrial buffer zone that prohibited using land for retail or restaurant activities.
The Queensland government intervened and placed a temporary injunction on council approvals in the Morningside area.
After the company’s longstanding exclusive deal with Coles expired in 2017, ACC got into the export sector and now ships 50 per cent of its product overseas.
It processes about 300,000 cattle a year, owns 34 farms and three feedlots that employ 180 people and supplies bio material for human heart valve replacements to the US.
Lee started in business in 1974, six years after he bought his first cattle farm. Lee’s son Anthony is now ACC’s chief executive. Lee also owns property and aviation assets.
Lee also has a superyacht Keri Lee III and last year sued an American film company for $12.85 million for alleged damage to the boat.
KIM CANNON: FIRSTMAC
$1.08b ranked 135
Kim Cannon owns Firstmac services, a non-bank mortgage lender, which posted a pre-tax profit of $100 million last year.
The company, which services about 60,000 customers, has a loan portfolio of about $16 billion. Cannon launched his first equipment finance firm, Lease National Finance, in 1979. He also owns a Brisbane high rise office block.
BRIAN FLANNERY: WHITE ENERGY
$1.21b ($1.1b) ranked 125 (116)
Richlister Brian Flannery made his fortune from coal miner Felix Resources, which he sold in 2010 netting him $500 million.
He now has stakes in a range of businesses including his popular $100 million Elements of Byron resort and spa, which is connected to the Byron Bay township via a $4 million solar-powered train Flannery built himself.
He also owns property projects and power plants. Last year, he decided to invest more into silica sand miner Metallica as part of a $9.6m capital raising by the Brisbane-based company.
Flannery made the investment through his family firm Ilwella along with sand miner Sibelco and German investor Sparta. Flannery and wife Peggy also own the KTQ Developments property business, and he remains managing director of ASX-listed coal technology company White Energy.
JACK LIN AND GORDON FU: TRONDAGE ENTERPRISES; YFG SHOPPING CENTRES
$1.26b ($1.51b) ranked 107 and 111 (83)
Jack Lin and his father-in-law Gordon Fu, who arrived in Australia from Taiwan, are the largest private owners of shopping malls in Australia – even after Westfield.
Mr Fu, who came to Australia in 1992, reportedly started out painting cinema posters before his entrepreneurial career began in the construction industry.
He also established a fast-food firm called Sun Smile Chicken. Together the pair have built the Trondage business and with their YFG now own 20 centres, including Australia Fair on the Gold Coast and Toowong Village and Tower in Brisbane.
REG ROWE: SUPER RETAIL GROUP
$1.41b ($1.3) ranked 96 (106)
Reg Rowe is a major shareholder of Supercheap Auto, BCF, Rebel and Macpac chains after starting his auto part mail order business with his wife Hazel in 1974.
After leaving Myer, Rowe set up his Super Retail Group, which was later listed on the ASX. Rowe now owns a string of real estate properties through his Re-Grow Capital, with much of that portfolio used for Supercheap Auto stores.
JOHN RICHARDS: JJ RICHARDS AND SONS
$1.48b ($1.49b) ranked 96 (86)
J.J. Richards and Sons Pty Ltd was established by Joseph John Richards, when he started his first kerbside collection in Murwillumbah Shire in 1932.
In 1962, the company won the refuse contract at Toowoomba and in 1968 in Redland and Albert Shires.
Today, it is the biggest privately owned waste management company in Australia and collects and processes a range of waste from household to industrial bin services, oil collection and recycling services.
The business made a $126 million net profit last year from $801 million revenue.
SAM CHONG: JELLINBAH GROUP
$2.06b ($1b) ranked 94 (129)
Sam Chong was one of the founders of the coking coal mine Jellinbah East Coal Mine in the Bowen Basin. His partners were Jim Gorman, Gary Zamel and the late Ken Talbot. Operations at the open-cut mine began in 1989. Surging coal prices in 2022 accounted for a huge $1.92 billion profit which made up much of his climb up the ladder last year.
Much of Chong’s fortune is from his stake in the coal mine. Profits fell in 2021 but it paid $126 million in dividends, $200 million less than in 2020.
Chong’s Felicity Hotels chain also owns outlets and property across Brisbane.
MAHA SINNATHAMBY: SPRINGFIELD CITY GROUP
$2.1b ($1.91b) ranked 67 (61)
Businessman and property developer Maha Sinnathamby is the mastermind behind the Greater Springfield Development in Ipswich. It is the largest masterplanned community in Australia.
He started his own property business in Perth in 1971, before moving to Queensland in the early 1980s. Sinnathamby and business partner Bob Sharpless bought 2832ha of land southwest of Brisbane in 1992 when it had no roads, transport links or residents.
Today, Springfield has a population of 50,000, a dozen schools, shopping centres and hotels.
Investment bank MA Group is heading a consortium to spend $15 billion to develop Springfield’s CBD, known as the Knowledge Precinct. Approval has already been granted for 5340 apartments.
JOHN VAN LIESHOUT: SUPER A-MART
$2.88b ($256b) ranked 64 (37)
Billionaire and Super Amart founder John Van Lieshout started building his wealth when he opened a furniture retail outlet after arriving in Australia from the Netherlands with his parents and 12 siblings in 1960.
That grew into Super Amart, now one of Australia’s biggest retail chains.
But the majority of his wealth has come from property deals. In 2021, he increased his property holdings in a popular southside precinct at 520 Kessels Rd, Macgregor, paying $17.5 million for the property.
He sold his stake in the furniture company to a private equity firm in 2006 but retained freehold ownership.
He also owns development company Unison Projects which is overseeing subdivisions in Queensland and New South Wales.
BIANCA RINEHART: HANCOCK PROSPECTING
$2.88b ($2.46b) ranked at 44
Bianca Rinehart is one of mining giant Gina Rinehart’s four children and the eldest daughter.
She is a trustee of the Hope Margaret Hancock Trust and replaced her mother as trustee in 2015, after a lengthy court battle. The trust fund owns almost 24 per cent of the Hancock Prospecting mining and investment business with each child getting an equal share. She has a degree in hospitality and hotel management from Flinders University in Adelaide.
BRUCE MATHIESON: ALH GROUP
$2.9b (2.5b) ranked 38 (38)
The Mathieson family has been a major player in the Australian pub scene for almost 50 years. Bruce Mathieson Snr has been involved in the hotel industry since 1974.
In 2000, the Bruce Mathieson Group formed a partnership with Woolworths which led to the ALH Group.
Last year, Woolworths bought out his stake in ALH in exchange for a minority stake of 15 per cent in the $13bn ASX-listed Endeavour Group, which owns the ALH chain of pubs and hotels, as well as bottle shop brands Dan Murphy’s and BWS.
Bruce Snr stepped down from the Endeavour Group board and was replaced by son Bruce Jnr, who subsequently left an executive position, with Mathieson remaining Endeavour’s biggest shareholder and on its board as a non-executive director.
Mathieson bought his first hotel in 1975, and has since bought and sold more than 9000 around Australia. He also owns large landholdings on Melbourne’s outskirts.
CHRIS WALLIN: QCOAL
$3.33b ($1.89b) ranked 36 (65)
Coal billionaire Chris Wallin rose up the ladder from 65 to 36 by the end of 2022. He hauled in $300 million in dividends from his privately-owned QCoal on the back of record coal prices in 2022.
Wallin’s QCoal Group, which produces both metallurgical and thermal coal, has an interest in four coal mines in Queensland’s Bowen Basin and is the country’s biggest independent coal exploration and mining company.
Wallin, a former geologist with the Queensland public service, established QCoal in 1989. In the 2021 financial year, the corporate giant filed a $582.1m after-tax profit with ASIC.
Last year’s results were even better with a $491m improvement allowing Mr Wallin to take $300m in dividends. He also owns stakes in several ASX-listed mining companies.
CLIVE PALMER: PALMER LEISURE COOLUM; MINERALOGY
$20.4b ($18.35b) ranked 32 (7)
Mining magnate Clive Palmer increased his wealth again despite spending more than $100 million on last year’s election campaign for his Palmer United Australia Party. He announced in January he was selling his Queensland Nickel refinery in Townsville for $1.5 billion to the little-known Swiss-based firm Zero Carbon Investek. It is believed the majority of his wealth comes from royalties from a controversial deal with CITIC Pacific over the huge Sino Iron project in Western Australia’s Pilbara.
His major businesses are Mineralogy, Townsville’s Queensland Nickel, the Palmer Coolum Resort on the Sunshine Coast, Palmer Sea Reef Golf Course at Port Douglas, Palmer Colonial Golf Course at Robina, the Palmer Gold Coast Golf Course, also at Robina and Waratah Coal.
He created the Palmer United Party in April 2013, and won the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax. He also spent millions on legal challenges over the past year.
Originally published as From bar tsars, mining magnates and fashionistas, who are the wealthiest people in Queensland? 2023’s rich list has been revealed
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