Meet Australia’s newest billionaires: Michael Dorrell’s $13.54bn Rich List entry
Australia’s wealthiest new billionaire is a little-known Wall Street success story who loves his NRL Cronulla Sharks. Meet the 19 debutantes on The List 2025.
Australia’s wealthiest new billionaire is a little-known Wall Street success story who loves his NRL Cronulla Sharks and spends weekends at his $US150m ($240m) Florida mansion near US President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago private club.
Michael Dorrell debuts on The List – Australia’s Richest 250 this year with an estimated $13.54bn fortune from his New York investment firm Stonepeak, which has holdings in more than $US72bn of assets under management around the world.
Stonepeak has more than 275 staff globally and invests in a string of energy, infrastructure and other assets and companies. It achieved a $US15bn valuation when Blue Owl Capital Partners took a minority stake for $2bn in mid-2023.
Dorrell is one of 19 new names on the 2025 edition of The List, a group that also includes Perth billionaire Vikas Rambal – who is building a giant $6.5bn fertiliser plant on the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia – and Terrace Tower Group owners Betty Klimenko and Monica Saunders-Weinberg.
Other debutants include Queensland coal baron Matt Latimore ($680m), who owns the M Group coal trading business and is a keen bird watcher and Ferrari collector, and Perth property identity Dale Alcock ($849m), one of the country’s biggest home builders.
Chemist Warehouse chief commercial officer and billionaire Damien Gance ($1.12bn) also debuts after the merger of the retail giant with ASX-listed Sigma Healthcare earlier this year, as do Chemist Warehouse brothers and executives Marcello Verrocchi ($917m) and Adrian Verrocchi ($905m).
Dorrell is by far the wealthiest new name on The List, debuting in 13th position ahead of veteran names such as Frank Lowy, James Packer and Lindsay Fox.
The 51-year-old Dorrell owns a substantial shareholding in the New York-based Stonepeak, which he started with former business partner Trent Vichie in 2012 with the backing of asset giant Blackstone – after moving to the US with Macquarie in the early 2000s.
Before then, he had completed commerce and law degrees at the University of NSW but had poor grades, admitting he got no law job offers and only one in investment banking – from Goldman Sachs – that was withdrawn after they saw his study results.
He says he later was able to talk himself into a graduate role at Macquarie Group by turning up to a networking event in Sydney. “I didn’t take university seriously in retrospect. But in any event, I got into Macquarie because they had a kind of drinks session. And if you didn’t get in the traditional way, you turn up to the drinks night and you get in that way. So that’s how I got into Macquarie,” Dorrell told the Inside the Rope podcast in February.
He was mentored by Ed Gilmartin, the husband of Macquarie chief executive Shemara Wikramanayake, and for a time worked in the group’s mergers and acquisitions division, advising infrastructure funds on deals.
Dorrell later joined the New York office of what he called a “skeleton” Macquarie crew in the US, chasing infrastructure financing deals as it had successfully done in Australia, Britain, Canada and elsewhere.
It was hard going in America for several years, but by 2006 the big Wall Street banks realised just how much money Macquarie was making from infrastructure and started piling in.
They were mostly raising billions of dollars for new funds but were approaching slow moving infrastructure like private equity.
“And that’s also when I said: ‘Holy crap I’ve just drawn dumb luck. I’m 31 years old and I happen to have experience in this area where people are raising all this money who, frankly, are going to be learning the game,” Dorrell told The Australian late last year.
“If ever going to do something entrepreneurial, it’s just staring me in the face’.”
That led to him and Vichie launching an infrastructure fund with Blackstone – only to run into the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 and struggle for several years to raise any money.
By 2012 they decided to form their own business, Stonepeak, surviving a nerve-wracking stint in Olympia, the capital of Washington state, waiting for the approval of a $US250m backing by a state pension fund that would get them started and lead to another $US400m cornerstone commitment from a large teachers’ pension fund.
Stonepeak now has investments across 61 countries, from Air Transport Services Group, a global wide body freighter aircraft leasing business, to New Zealand retirement and aged care provider Arvida Group, 70 per cent of Geelong Port in Australia and dozens of other holdings.
More recently, Dorrell has made headlines for some big real estate purchases, including shelling out $US150m last year to buy the Tarpon Island residence in Palm Beach, Florida.
The mansion is within sight of Mar-a-Lago, which keen cyclist Dorrell often rides past on weekends.
He is also a keen fan of NRL team Cronulla Sharks, and donated $5m to the club last year after approaching its management via a message to the front desk.
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