Richest 250 2021: Your lockdown pizza habit helped make The List’s Australian billionaires even richer
A select group of Australian billionaires had a very good pandemic indeed. Here’s why.
2020 was supposed to be a shocking year for bank balances, right?
Not for a select group of Australian billionaires, who had a very good pandemic indeed.
Some doubled their wealth.
Others zoomed up the charts in the nation’s most important wealth leaderboard, The List: Australia’s Richest 250, published on Saturday in The Weekend Australian and theaustralian.com.au/rich250.
And overall the nation’s wealthiest grew their piggybanks by more than $90 billion in the past year, from $377 billion in March 2020 to $470 billion today.
If you’re looking at a bruised bank-balance and wondering how, we’ve worked it out: pizza (and the boxes), the Pilbara and personal tech.
Turns out all that home delivery wasn’t just bloating your waistline; it contributed to a $5 billion boost for the personal wealth of the Pratt family, which controls packaging giant Visy.
Dominos pizza boss Jack Cowin rocketed up the charts too – but his rise was nothing compared with how the soaring iron ore price helped mining titans Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest cash in.
The Pilbara-focused billionaires are ranked at number one and two respectively on The List, with Rinehart up $20 billion in just 12 months to now be worth $36.28b.
Forrest’s wealth grew by more than $7 billion to $29.61b, as China poured stimulus money into its industrial sector – prompting massive demand for steelmaking and the iron ore that is an essential ingredient.
Young tech kings Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar led the surge in wealth for Listers who make or sell collaborative software, laptops, printers and all the other home-office stuff you stocked up on, with each of the Atlassian founders growing his wealth by more than $9 billion to take out the 4th and 5th spots in our top 5.
–For all of The List: Australia’s Richest 250, and all the secrets of our richest individuals, pick up The Weekend Australian on Saturday, March 20 or visit theaustralian.com.au/rich250
