Victoria’s richest people and how they got there

MANY of Victoria’s richest fly under the radar. So how did some of our wealthiest get there, while managing to stay relatively unknown?

Carolyn Cresswell, Managing Director of Carmen's Fine Foods. She is pictured with some of the muesli she makes.

IF you were asked who John Gandel, Jamuna Gurung and Owen Kerr were, would you know?

Maybe not. But they are pretty powerful Victorians.

Those three were the state’s second-richest man, woman and young rich lister aged under 40 when BRW magazine last released its various rankings.

The top-ranked Victorians on those lists were a bit more familiar: Anthony Pratt, Patricia Ilhan and Ruslan Kogan respectively.

But there are plenty of people in our state whose profiles might be low but their bank balances are anything but.

So was it hard work, family money or good luck that got them started?

JOHN GANDEL

John Gandel with granddaughters Lauren Thurin and Jacqui Berman.

The retail and stockmarket guru made his fortune in shopping centres and commercial real estate. He owns half of the massive Chadstone Shopping Centre.

It seems property developer is a job title worth pursuing to make a buck.

The 80-year-old got a good start by inheriting the Sussan clothing group his parents started. Wealth: $4.4b

MAURICE ALTER AND FAMILY

He might be one of Australia’s richest men but Alter, 89, and his family are famously private.

A Polish-born Jew, Alter came to Melbourne as a displaced person in the 1940s and now owns various shopping centre properties including Coles headquarters in Tooronga, Werribee Plaza and Pacific Epping.

Wealth $1.6b

JAMUNA GURUNG AND SHESH GALE

The Nepalese-born couple have been in Australian since 1990 and built a fortune in property investments, the Melbourne Institute of Technology and a hotel development in Kathmandu.

They are also planning a $450 million hotel and apartment complex near Victoria Market. Wealth: $335m

INES SCOTLAND

Ines Scotland speaks in Saudi Arabia.

After a career in the resources industry, Scotland rose to be chief executive of Citadel Resource Group and later Ivanhoe Australia and has been described as Australia’s most successful self-made female mining executive.

Citadel was one of just a handful of western mining companies in Saudi Arabia, a country where women cannot drive cars let alone run companies.

Wealth: $78m

CAROLYN CRESSWELL

The mother of four put up $1000 when she was only 18 to buy a small muesli business.

Two decades later, Carman’s is a major food manufacturer stocked in supermarkets and exports to more than 30 countries with Creswell still at the helm.

Wealth: $57m

OWEN KERR

Co-founder of online retail foreign exchange broker Pepperstone.

Kerr and business partner Joe Davenport established Pepperstone in 2010.

Kerr, aged 30, graduated from Monash University with a bachelor degree of business systems in 2005.

Pepperstone has offices in Melbourne, Shanghai, Dallas and Odessa and wants to list on the stockmarket.

Wealth: $256m

RUSLAN KOGAN

Entrepreneur Ruslan Kogan.

The 31-year-old internet entrepreneur and his Kogan.com business sells thousands of products from TVs and computers to sporting, camping/outdoors and homewares through private brands Fortis, Komodo and Ovela.

He grew up a Belarusian immigrant in housing commission flats in Elsternwick and sold TVs out of his parents’ garage as a teenager.

Wealth: $349m

TOLGA KUMOVA

The Melbourne-born 35-year-old is the executive director and second-largest shareholder of African-based listed mining company Syrah Resources.

While Australia’s mining boom might have ended, Syrah is involved in a growth commodity, graphite, which has a bright future as a key component in long life batteries including for electric cars.

Wealth: $40m