Gina Rinehart tops Richest 250 but Canva’s Melanie Perkins the big mover as mining and technology boom
The top 10 on The List are wealthier than ever before, led by two of the country’s most successful businesswomen who have changed the face of corporate Australia.
Two women encapsulate the huge and changing fortunes of Australia’s wealthiest people.
Billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart tops this year’s edition of The List – Australia’s Richest 250, ahead of notable business identities including Andrew Forrest, Mike Cannon-Brookes, Anthony Pratt and Clive Palmer.
But the biggest mover on The List is Canva’s 34-year-old boss Melanie Perkins, who rockets into the top 10 along with husband and co-founder Cliff Obrecht, 36, for the first time.
Rinehart’s wealth reaches $32.64bn in the 2022 edition of The List, published in a special edition of The Australian on Friday, thanks to a record-breaking $7bn profit for her Hancock Prospecting in 2021.
Yet Perkins and Obrecht’s wealth has increased by a whopping $13.39bn in only a year, moving them into 8th and 9th position on The List. For context on how the pair’s wealth has increased, their $15.89bn fortune this year is more than the combined fortunes of Kerry Stokes and James Packer.
The Canva duo have even been compared to some of the biggest legends in the global tech scene.
“Melanie and Cliff remind me so much of Larry (Page) and Sergey (Brin) at Google,” said US-based former top Google executive Wesley Chan, an early Canva investor and now board member.
The full 2022 edition of The List is published on Friday in a special issue contained in The Australian, and will reveal how new industries such as technology and online fashion in Australia are thriving alongside older ones such as manufacturing and property development. Emerging companies such as Canva, the online graphics business now worth $55bn, and software giant Atlassian sit alongside established firms including Visy, Fortescue Metals Group and Meriton at the top of The List.
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More money is being made quicker than ever before, but even the youngest duo in the top 10, Perkins and Obrecht, had to do the hard yards early in their career.
“We pitched to almost every VC (venture capitalist) in the world,” Obrecht says in an interview with The List.
“There were some really dark moments. You have a spreadsheet with 100 investors, and then you cross them off 10 or 20 at a time, because they’ve all rejected you, and then you have to build the pipeline again. And you get rejected again.”
Perkins and Obrecht persevered and have been raising huge amounts of money ever since.
Rinehart has also showed vast ambition in gathering a huge amount of funding for her Hope Downs iron ore mine and then paying off $10bn debt in the same decade that Canva grew from nothing into a big name.
Rinehart tops the 2022 edition of The List and fellow mining magnate Andrew Forrest is a close second with wealth of $31.77bn.
Cardboard box manufacturing magnate Anthony Pratt is in the third position with $27.77bn.
But the top 10 is mostly a story of Australia’s continued mining fortunes juxtaposed with a technology boom.
There are four mining magnates in the top 10, with Mrs Rinehart and Mr Forrest joined by Queensland billionaire Clive Palmer in 7th position with estimated wealth of $18.35bn and South African-born former Glencore boss Ivan Glasenberg 10th with a $9.10bn fortune.
For the first time, there are also four technology leaders in the top echelons of The List – each considerably younger than the billionaires in other industries.
Atlassian co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar are 4th and 5th with wealth of $26.20bn and $25.99bn respectively for the 42-year-olds.
Rounding out the top 10 is Sydney apartments king Harry Triguboff, who is 6th with wealth of $20.81bn.
While Mr Triguboff is best known for building swathes of properties in his hometown, he is also moving into new territories like Canberra and Melbourne to show that even at 89 it is never too late to show some entrepreneurial spirit.
The 2022 edition of The List – Australia’s Richest 250 is published on Friday in The Australian