$3bn dividend bonanza for Australia’s billionaire rich-listers

From mining to Blundstone boots, technology and Chemist Warehouse, most owners of our biggest private companies cashed in this year. But a few are counting losses | SEE THE LIST

From left: Lindsay Fox, Gina Rinehart, Laurence Escalante, Jack Cowin and Kim Cannon.

Talk about a bonanza for Australia’s richest billionaires.

From mining magnates to retail giants and a pair of little known sisters from suburban Hobart, it has been a year of big paydays for the owners of the country’s biggest private companies.

Analysis by The Weekend Australian shows 20 members of The List – Australia’s Richest 250 shared in more than $3bn dividends this year, with eight taking home more than $100m alone.

Little-known Brisbane billionaire Sam Chong shared in the highest amount, $714m paid out by coking coal miner Jellinbah Group.

Chong will next month celebrate 30 years as a director and shareholder of Jellinbah, which exports mostly coking coal used by steel mills.

Jellinbah owns its Queensland mines with subsidiaries of Japanese group Marubeni and global mining giant Anglo-American. Those companies shared in the dividends paid out by Jellinbah from its $1.07bn net profit for the 2024 financial year.

Probably the least-known members of the group of big dividend recipients though are the owners of the Blundstone boots manufacturing empire, Hobart residents Helen Dickinson and Anne Routley.

The sisters are the daughters of the late Harold Cuthbertson, who took over the family’s Blundstone business in 1953 and ran it successfully for 51 years.

Blundstone only started filing financial reports with the corporate regulator last year, after a previous exemption for it and other old companies was stopped by the Albanese government.

This year’s Blundstone financial report showed it made a $US26.4m ($40.1m) net profit from $US116m revenue ($179m), down slightly from the respective $US28m and $136m results from 2023.

Dickinson and Routley shared in $US22.4m ($34.1m) dividends.

The owners of Blundstone boots shared $34m in dividends.

Otherwise, the biggest dividend payers were a collection of large mining companies, fast-emerging technology firms and some other well-known Australian brands and privately held corporations.

Major miners who were the recipients of big paydays include Gina Rinehart and her family at Hancock Prospecting (a provision for $553m in dividends was included in that company’s accounts) and QCoal owner Chris Wallin ($400m).

Then there is Wright Prospecting, owned by a trio of low-profile descendants of Pilbara pioneer Peter Wright — the one-time business partner of billionaire Gina Rinehart’s late father Lang Hancock.

Wright Prospecting is jointly owned by three Perth billionaires and their families who feature prominently on the 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.

Wright Prospecting’s owners shared in $307m dividends; $263m paid during the 2024 financial year and another $44m paid between the start of July and end of October.

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

Jack Gance of Chemist Warehouse was another big dividend recipient.

Kim Cannon, the billionaire owner of mortgage business Firstmac, took home a $17.1m dividend, while trucking magnate Lindsay Fox got a $6.5m payday from Linfox.

Both their companies suffered profit falls, with Linfox’s loss hitting about $77m after a big writedown on its Armaguard cash handling business. Firstmac’s net profit fell to $14.7m from $50.3m in 2023 as high interest rates hit its profit margins.

Then there is Robert Chamberlain, the 40-year-old owner of Huno Group, which runs a network of travel websites, mostly based overseas, that refer more than $1bn in sales each year to partner airlines and hotels.

Chamberlain started it purely as a flight comparison site before morphing into other forms of travel, such as hotels and car bookings.

Huno made a $78m profit in 2024, according to documents lodged with the corporate regulator this week, from $232m revenue. Chamberlain was paid a $26m dividend.

Laurence Escalante, the founder of social gaming business Virtual Gaming Worlds (VGW), shared in $360m dividends, while James Packer’s Consolidated Press Holdings investment firm paid him $120m.

Healthcare billionaire Dennis Bastas was paid $101m dividends by his DGB Health, Australia’s largest privately held generic drug supplier, and Chemist Warehouse co-founders Jack and Sam Gance and Mario Verrocchi shared $365m in dividends, including $148m paid after the end of the financial year.