Winners and losers of richest 250 for 2024
Some have made bigger fortunes while others have suffered profit falls. These are the winners and losers on this year’s The List - Richest 250.
It has been a year of deals for Australia’s richest individuals and families, a comeback for tech stocks, a sector that was very much out of fashion a year ago, and plenty of others who have made big fortunes.
Yet some of the biggest private companies in Australia have suffered falling profits as economic headwinds bite.
Here are some winners and losers on this year’s edition of The List - Richest 250, comparing where they are ranked in 2024 compared to 2023.
Tough times
14th, Ivan Glasenberg, $9.42bn
2023: 8th, $12.43bn
Glasenberg’s wealth falls in line with the share price of the London-listed commodity trading giant Glencore. The former boss of Glencore still lives in Switzerland, where he led the company for almost 20 years before stepping down in 2021. He took out Australian citizenship when he worked at Glencore’s local coal division in the 1980s
36th, Jack Cowin, $3.55bn
2023: 22nd, $4.21bn
It has been a whopper of a year for Cowin and his Hungry Jack’s fast food chain, which had sales of more than $2 billion for the first time. Cowin is also chairman and major shareholder of the ASX-listed Domino’s Pizza Enterprises and has a collection of non-food investments, including Houston-based Apache Industrial, which provides scaffolding, insulation, fireproofing and other services to the oil and gas industry. The fall in the Domino’s share price accounts for the drop in Cowin’s wealth this year.
56th, Bruce Mathieson, $2.55bn
2023: 36th with $2.90bn in 2023
Mathieson is battling on plenty of fronts, including watching his significant stake in Star Entertainment fall in value as the casino group continues to struggle. However, most of his wealth is tied to the listed Endeavour Group, the result of the merger of his pub assets with Woolworths and liquor outlets, which has also fallen this year.
45th, Michael Hintze, $2.96bn
2023: 71st, $3.12bn
Hintze is starting over after agreeing to sell most of his $21 billion CQS business. Made a baron upon being appointed a member of Britain’s House of Lords in 2022, Hintze will launch a new firm to run his own flagship hedge fund when the sale of London-based CQS to Canada’s Manulife Investment Management is finalised this year.
78th, Shaun Bonétt, $1.80bn
2023: 71st, $1.97bn
Like many owners of technology-based companies, Bonétt has run into some issues since the tech boom. His digital gift card business Prezzee has been growing quickly in recent years, selling gift cards for international and local retailers such as Amazon, Apple and David Jones. Prezzee’s most recent financial accounts, however, showed a $38.8 million loss, although the company says it is cashflow positive. Bonétt’s wealth is underpinned by a more traditional source – bricks and mortar retail and commercial property.
100th, Alex Waislitz, $1.50bn
2023: 108th, $1.53bn
Waislitz made his fortune investing in small-cap stocks with his Thorney group, which also manages two listed investment companies.
141st, Raphael Geminder, $1.09bn
2023: 108th, $1.25bn
The man known as Ruffy is poised to end a decade in the listed company world with his packaging business Pact Group. Spun out of the very private Pratt family conglomerate (Geminder is married to Fiona, daughter of the late Richard Pratt), Pact floated on the ASX in a blaze of glory in late 2013. Geminder has, however, offered to privatise the business at a valuation that is about a quarter of what it was worth when it first went public.
147-148th, Andrew & Sam Buckeridge, $1.07bn (combined)
2023: 99-100th, $1.35bn
The family of the late Len Buckeridge is once again considering selling BGC, the Perth building materials and home building company he started in 1959. It has tried several times to offload the business since 2018 as the family have battled over Buckeridge’s estate, and while BGC remains a large company, it has struggled to post profits due to escalating construction costs.
182nd, Nick Molnar, $799m
2023: 144th, $962m
It is only 10 years since Molnar started the buy-now-pay later business Afterpay that surged in popularity with millennials and seems to have become a mainstay for retailers. Whether the retailers are still willing to pay for the service seems to be another question though, with Afterpay now owned by US giant Block (formerly Square) and not attracting the huge amount of publicity it once did.
162nd, Christian Beck, $966m
2023: 133rd, $1.03bn
Financial accounts lodged by Beck’s parent company ATI International showed a net loss of $177 million in 2023 and borrowings of more than $2.6 billion after it spent $400 million on acquisitions. Management has said the business is EBITDA-positive
On the up
3rd, Nicola Forrest, $37.17bn
Nicola Forrest arrives on The List this year due to the confirmation of her separation from husband Andrew Forrest, founder and executive chairman of Fortescue Metals Group. Her new separate shareholding in Fortescue – it is held solely in her name while the rest of the Forrest family fortune is jointly held – accounts for her inclusion on The List
9th Kerry Stokes, $11.01bn
2023: 13th, $7.53bn
In wealth terms, it has been a stellar 12 months for Stokes, with the share price of his Seven Group Holdings conglomerate rising markedly. SGH owns Caterpillar mining truck dealerships in WA, NSW and the ACT; equipment hire business Coates; a majority stake in building supplies firm Boral; and other oil and gas-related investments.
31st, Edward Craven, $3.86bn
2023: 68th, $2.01bn
Craven has already amassed a considerable fortune from cryptocurrency and sports book business Stake.com, and is on the way to another with the Kick streaming service. Stake is one of the biggest gambling entities in the world – it is banned in countries like Australia where gambling with crypto is prohibited – and Kick is quickly growing a substantial following.
25th, James Packer, $4.20bn
2023: 26th, $3.68bn
While he now shuns the spotlight and spends most of his time overseas, Packer has been one of the more prolific billionaires, in investment terms, at least. As of late last year, he now has a circa $1.2 billion portfolio of listed stocks, mostly US-based shareholdings including Paramount, Nvidia and Meta.
72nd, Dick Honan, $1.86bn
2023: 146th, $936m
Documents lodged with the corporate regulator late last year shed some more light on the sheer size of Honan’s wheat processing and ethanol production empire. Manildra’s revenue hit $2.3 billion last year and the company, which employs about 1150 people, made a net profit of about $203 million, pushing Honan’s estimated wealth up considerably
195th, Graham Turner, $739m
2023: 210th, $614m
Flight Centre, founded in 1982, has enjoyed a good year on the ASX. It has survived economic downturns, wars, the rise of the internet, the global financial crisis and, most challenging of all, the Covid pandemic.