Australia’s newest billionaires revealed in Richest 250
There’s a record 170 billionaires in Australia including three new women and a little-known former Sydney banker now worth $13bn.
There’s a record 170 billionaires in Australia this year, including new entrants to the wealthy elite ranks such as Michael Dorrell, a mad Cronulla Sharks fan who has conquered Wall Street, and flamboyant Supercars team owner Betty Klimenko.
Also joining as billionaires for the first time on The List – Australia’s Richest 250 in 2025 is the man behind Australia’s biggest manufacturing project, the families who run Chemist Warehouse, the co-founders of Afterpay, two young cryptocurrency magnates and a little-known online travel company
Here are Australia’s 14 newest billionaires.
Michael Dorrell ($13.54 billion)
Dorrell is one of Australia’s most successful yet little-known identities, having found huge success on Wall St after growing up in Sydney.
Dorrell is co-founder and chairman and chief executive of Stonepeak, which these days is one of the most sought after private investment funds on Wall Street. His fund now has more than $US72bn ($113.2bn) under management, 275 staff around the world and counts some of the world’s biggest pension names, including Australian funds, as backers.
Stonepeak invests in a string of energy, infrastructure and other assets and companies and achieved a $US15bn (A$23.6bn) valuation when Blue Owl Capital Partners took a minority stake for $2bn in mid-2023, and Dorrell is its biggest shareholder.
Last year he bought a $US150m ($A235m) mansion in Florida’s Palm Beach and also donated $5m to NRL club Cronulla – the team he grew up supporting in Sydney.
Vikas Rambal ($4.80 billion)
About 25 years after arriving from India as a 32-year-old searching for new opportunities, and after a boyhood obsession with Holden cars, Rambal looks set to realise a $6.5bn dream. His Perdaman is almost halfway through building a giant fertiliser plant on the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia. The plant is planned to ramp up to full production in two years and make about 2.3 million tonnes of urea (a form of fertiliser for food production) per year from natural gas.
Betty Klimenko & Monica Saunders-Weinberg ($1.98 billion combined)
The children of late Westfield co-founder John Saunders oversee an investment empire that has net assets worth $1.85bn, including an extensive portfolio of real estate assets in Australia such as the Eastgardens Westfield shopping centre and offices in the US, where Saunders-Weinberg owns property in Los Angeles.
Terrace Tower also has a lending business providing private credit to wealthy families. Klimenko separately owns a Supercars team, Erebus Motorsport.
Damien Gance ($1.12 billion)
Gance is the son of Sam Gance, co-founder of the Chemist Warehouse pharmacy and retail giant that has emerged as a public company after its reverse takeover of ASX-listed Sigma Healthcare was completed in February.
Gance is the company’s chief commercial officer.
He is a qualified pharmacist who was the first Chemist Warehouse franchisee when the business opened its first pharmacy in 2000.
He sold $120m of Sigma shares in mid-February and paid $33.5m for the luxury Malia on Belongil house near Byron Bay.
Michael Gregg ($1.50 billion)
Much of Gregg’s fortune is based on his WiseTech shareholding, the logistics software business to which he returned to the board in February after a two-year absence.
Gregg invested in WiseTech in 2005, joining its board as it was on the cusp of what would be huge growth under founder Richard White.
Gregg also co-founded the Shearwater Capital investment firm. Its early stage investments include Amber Electric and dog food label Lyka.
Kerr Neilson ($1.34 billion)
Neilson started global funds management business Platinum Asset Management in 1994 and still has a large shareholding in the business, which he has used to try to influence its strategic direction despite stepping down from its board in late 2022.
Neilson’s considerable personal portfolio of stocks – he reportedly has holdings in at least 100 companies ranging from Puma to General Electric and Flutter Entertainment – accounts for the revaluation of his estimated wealth this year.
Anthony Eisen ($1.28 billion)
Eisen is getting back into business, announcing in late January his appointment as CEO of US tech firm Reshop.
Reshop has an app that allows consumers to track their returns and refunds from online retailers, and also said it had raised $US17m from investors when it announced Eisen’s appointment.
The move comes 11 years after Eisen started Afterpay with one-time neighbour and business partner Nick Molnar. Shares in the buy-now-pay-later sensation still provide the bulk of Eisen’s wealth.
Maree Isaacs ($1.27 billion)
Isaacs capped a tumultuous 2024 at software giant WiseTech, when she agreed to sell her 8.17 per cent stake in the ASX-listed company to her billionaire co-founder Richard White late last year. She helped White start WiseTech in 1994, handling most of the back office functions at the business after the pair had previously worked together at Real Tech Systems Integration. Under the terms of the deal with White, Isaacs reaped an initial payment of $285m and future quarterly payments based on the volume weighted average price of WiseTech shares over a period of up to seven years.
Robert Chamberlain ($1.15 billion)
Chamberlain’s network of travel websites is one of the most profitable in his industry in Australia, making a net profit of $78m from $232m revenue in 2024.
Huno Group’s travel websites, mostly based overseas, claim to help 20 million travellers around the world search for hotels, flights and car hire options every month.
Chamberlain built his first price comparison and booking website, AirfaresFlights.com.au, while studying for an IT degree at the University of Sydney in 2003.
What began as a hobby quickly became his business.
Tony Walls ($1.12 billion)
Walls is a billionaire again thanks to the share price rise of his software services business Objective, which is celebrating 25 years as a listed company on the ASX this year.
Objective provides services to government organisations and departments to help them digitalise, and Walls has not sold a share in the business since it floated.
Nick Molnar ($1.11 billion)
Molnar returns to the billionaire ranks this year thanks to the rising share price of US giant Block (formerly Square), which in 2022 took over the Afterpay buy-now-pay-later business he started with Anthony Eisen 10 years ago.
The all-shares deal capped a remarkable rise for Afterpay, but Molnar is now in an executive role across all of Block that has him running sales through all its divisions, including Afterpay, Cash App and Square, and reporting directly to Block founder Jack Dorsey.
James Ferguson & Robbie Ferguson ($1.09 billion combined)
Prolific gamers and game developers in their younger years, the Ferguson brothers founded and run Immutable, a blockchain start-up valued at $3.5bn following a funding round in 2022. Immutable has developed an innovative platform for non-fungible tokens (NFT) and blockchain game developers.
New-found crypto tailwinds and easing of regulation mean Immutable is poised to continue to grow.
The estimated wealth of the brothers increases with the rising value of their IMX tokens.
See the full Richest 250 list at www.richest250.com.au
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