The staggering wealth of richest people in NSW revealed
Two new billionaire sisters and a young little-known travel entrepreneur headline this year’s list that reveals the fortunes of Australia’s wealthy elite. Here are NSW’s richest people.
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Two new Sydney billionaire sisters headline this year’s list tracking the fortunes of Australia’s wealthy elite.
Betty Klimenko and Monica Saunders-Weinberg debut on the 2025 edition of The List - Australia’s Richest 250, published by The Australian today, with an estimated joint fortune of $1.98bn.
The children of late Westfield co-founder John Saunders oversee an investment empire that has net assets worth $1.85bn, including real estate assets in Australia such as the Eastgardens Westfield shopping centre and offices in the US, where Saunders-Weinberg owns property in Los Angeles.
Terrace Tower also has a lending business providing private credit to wealthy families. Klimenko separately owns a Supercars team, Erebus Motorsport.
The other new billionaire from NSW is little-known travel business owner Robert Chamberlain, the 41-year-old owner of Huno Group.
Chamberlain’s network of travel websites is one of the most profitable in his industry in Australia, making a net profit of $78m from $232m revenue in 2024. Huno Group’s travel sites, mostly based overseas, claim to help 20 million travellers around the world search for hotels, flights and car hire options every month.
Chamberlain built his first price comparison and booking website, AirfaresFlights.com.au, while studying for an IT degree at the University of Sydney in 2003. What began as a hobby quickly became his business.
Hotel bookings now make up the largest chunk of Huno’s revenue and the company is starting to use generative AI for more of its digital marketing content.
Gina Rinehart tops The List with an estimated $46.34bn fortune, and is one of a record 170 billionaires (including joint entries).
Total wealth for the 250 names on The List this year reaches $689.52bn, and the average wealth is $2.76bn.
There are 19 new names, led by Cronulla Sharks fan and now Wall Street identity Michael Dorrell. The former Sydney banker is the co-founder of infrastructure investment business Stonepeak, and he debuts in 13th position with estimated wealth of $13.54bn.
He grew up in Sydney and donated $5m to his beloved Sharks last year.
The youngest person on The List is Robbie Ferguson, 28, the co-founder of tech firm Immutable. The oldest is 101-year-old poker machine pioneer Len Ainsworth.
The cut-off to make The List sits at $635m, a mark reached by New York-based Rokt founder and chief executive, Bruce Buchanan.
Here are the richest people from NSW this year.
Harry Triguboff, $31.48bn
Few have made a bigger mark on Australia’s housing market than Triguboff, who is in his seventh decade at the helm of apartment giant Meriton.
Triguboff, who lost his beloved wife Rhonda last year, oversees a powerhouse business that has more than 10,000 units in development and another 15,000 apartments it owns and rents out.
The 62-year-old business now has annual revenue of more than $1.6bn and owns 23 serviced apartment blocks to make it Australia’s biggest owner of hotel rooms.
Mike Cannon-Brookes, $29.45bn
Cannon-Brookes is now solo at the helm of software giant Atlassian, which he and Scott Farquhar started in 2002 and built into a global success story.
While it is run from Sydney, Atlassian is listed on the NASDAQ exchange in the US. Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar remain major shareholders, with Atlassian’s rising share price accounting for their wealth increase.
Both regularly sell down their stakes, with Cannon-Brookes shelling out more than $300m on Sydney mansions and ploughing more than $1bn into Grok, his venture investment business. His portfolio includes a stake in the South Sydney NRL club and Utah Jazz NBA team.
Scott Farquhar, $29.19bn
Farquhar stepped down as co-chief executive of software giant Atlassian in April 2024 and then six months later sold his Sydney mansion for $130m.
Both moves signified a shift away from Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes. Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes started Atlassian in 2002 after meeting at the University of New South Wales.
So close were the pair that they bought mansions next door to each other in Sydney’s Point Piper.
But Farquhar, who had paid $71m for the 1863-built Elaine in 2017, sold his beachfront property after Cannon-Brookes reportedly lodged objections to Farquhar’s planned overhaul. Farquhar retains a big shareholding in Atlassian and runs the Skip Capital venture fund.
Richard White, $14.82bn
White has attracted a huge amount of attention and headlines in the past year, including stepping down as boss of WiseTech the day he and staff celebrated its 30th anniversary in October.
That came after weeks of controversy including allegations White had traded business advice for sex with several women. In a twist, White then returned to the WiseTech board as executive chairman in February after four directors quit over ongoing corporate governance concerns.
White also has a big shareholding in the logistics software business, including a portion he has agreed to buy from fellow billionaire and long-time WiseTech executive Maree Isaacs last year.
His wealth however has increased, with White coming in to the top 10 on The List for the first time ever.
Melanie Perkins & Cliff Obrecht, $14.02bn combined
Perkins and husband Obrecht oversee technology market darling Canva, now valued at $US32bn after some share sales by investors and staff last year, which is an increase of about $US6bn.
That, and the falling Australian dollar, account for their increase in wealth this year.
The duo started the business in 2013 with a design tool to simplify the creation of school yearbooks, and Canva is now a global graphic design giant used by 200 million users all over the world for presentations, social media posts, videos and logos.
Annualised revenue reached about $US2.5bn last year.
Despite being worth more than some of Australia’s biggest companies, including Coles, Woolworths, and Telstra, Canva remains privately held, and talks of a public listing on the US Nasdaq have often been mooted.
Originally published as The staggering wealth of richest people in NSW revealed
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