Billionaire Wright family heirs share $320m iron ore dividend bonanza

Big demand for iron ore earlier this year along with record commodity prices at the time led to big paydays for heirs of the mining industry’s pioneers.

Mining heir Alexandra Burt shared in more than $300m in dividends this year. Picture: Colin Murty / The Australian

Hundreds of millions of dollars of profits and dividends from higher iron ore prices earlier this year are flowing to some of Australia’s richest families.

Two of Perth’s wealthiest and most secretive families shared in a whopping $326m of dividends this year, according to financial accounts lodged with the corporate regulator.

The 2021 annual report for Wright Prospecting, owned by the descendants of Pilbara pioneer Peter Wright – the one-time business partner of billionaire Gina Rinehart’s late father Lang Hancock – shows the huge amounts the iron ore heirs made during the boom times for the commodity in the most recent financial year.

While iron ore prices have slumped in recent weeks, the year to June 30 was a bumper time for the heirs with lucrative deals in place to reap the rewards of iron ore exports to China.

The accounts reveal Wright Prospecting made a net profit of $297.6m for the year to June 30, up from $204.9m the previous year and almost double the result of 2019.

Wright Prospecting is jointly owned by a trio of Perth billionaires and their families who feature prominently on The List – Australia’s Richest 250. Angela Bennett is on one side of the Wright family and sisters Leonie Baldock and Alexandra Burt, daughters of Ms Bennett’s late brother Michael Wright, are on the other, via their private VOC Group.

The trio’s company received $435m in revenue, compared with $301m in 2019, with $215m of income from mining royalties or its share of the Hancock & Wright partnership income.

Wright Prospecting paid its owners $274m in dividends during the year and a further $52m after June 30. It paid company tax of about $129m.

“The company recorded increased revenues from royalties and its interest in the Hancock & Wright partnership, largely due to higher average commodity prices during the year,” the financial report said.

The result sets the scene for Mrs Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting to lodge a bumper profit result and dividend payout, and reveal the amount of tax it has paid, when it lodges its results with the corporate regulator at about the end of October.

The money to Wright Prospecting flows from deals Bennett’s late father Peter Wright and his business partner Lang Hancock made after pegging tenements in the Pilbara region of Western Australia in the 1960s.

Wright Prospecting has been receiving royalties and partnership income from iron ore ­assets being developed by mining giant Rio Tinto in the Pilbara. So lucrative is the arrangement that the Wright heirs have reaped more than $1.2bn in dividends over the past decade, pushing them all towards the top ranks of the Richest 250.

Ms Bennett’s fortune is invested in the private AMB Capital Partners, which has assets in property, financial services, energy and resources.

Baldock and Burt’s share of Wright Prospecting is held via the British Virgin Islands incorporated VOC. Burt owns the Voyager Estate winery in Western Australia’s Margaret River and has extensive philanthropic interests in the arts sector.

But Wright Prospecting has also been shelling out more money in legal fees, its accounts show. It had $4.1m in legal expenses in 2021, up from almost $3.9m in the previous 12 months.

The company has been involved in a series of legal battles in recent years. One involved Ms Bennett’s brother Julian Wright, who lost his legal claim for a slice of the family fortune in the West Australian Supreme Court earlier this year.

Angela Bennett.

Mr Wright had alleged his siblings, Ms Bennett and the late Michael Wright, had deceived him about the value of Wright Prospecting before he sold his shareholding for about $7m in 1987.

The court found his siblings had breached their fiduciary duties in not revealing everything about the company to him, but any claim was barred by a settlement clause signed in 2008.