Australia's richest man, Gina Rinehart, photo/ABC
"If you want to have a weekend, it's better not to choose to run a business."
The quote comes from 2021 Australia's richest man, Gina Rinehart.
She also topped the Australian Financial Review's (AFR) recent list of the richest women with a fortune of $30.7 billion.
Asked for advice for women to start a business or expand an existing business, she said: "Diligence, focus and dedication are all essential. ”
She believes that starting and running a business may not be suitable for those who want to work only during working hours, do not work overtime on weekends and public holidays, and pursue 'work-life balance'.
"That's how a lot of businesses go out of business." She even commented on it that way.
Many people may think that Ririehart's words are "unheard of" and that she is just "lucky" and inherited a large amount of wealth.
But under her management, her iron ore and agricultural empires achieved a net profit of up to $7.3 billion in 2021, more profitable than the other three banks outside the Commonwealth Bank.
Melanie Perkins, co-founder of Australia's up-and-coming unicorn Canva, and Angela Bennett, heiress of the mining industry, are ranked second and third respectively in the list of women's richest people, followed by Fiona Geminder and Heloise Pratt, who are members of Fratt, a well-known wealthy family in Australia, and sisters of the former richest man, Anthony Pratt, who are packaging the company Visy Shareholding in an Australia company.
Canva co-founder Melanie Perkins
The release date of the Women's Rich List coincides with International Women's Day, and it showcases the growing number of female entrepreneurs.
Judging from the list of the top ten female billionaires, it seems that mining and family wealth are the main sources, but the power of technology can not be ignored.
If we continue to expand the rankings to more people, it will make women's development and achievements in multiple fields such as technology, finance, and retail that they can also accumulate enough wealth for them.
Wealth-making "machine": iron ore vs technology
Overall, this year's Australian Women's Rich List (the top 50 female billionaires) has a combined wealth of $92.7 billion, up from $85.3 billion last year, with seven women including Risehart's daughter and descendants of mining magnate Peter Wright's heirs accounting for 49 per cent, down from 60 per cent the previous year.
Gina Rinehart (right) and eldest daughter Bianca Rinehart (left), photo/SMH
The statistics also include the wives or sisters of existing members of the Rich List, whose production team believes that, like their husbands or brothers, these women have an important participation in generating the majority of the family's wealth.
Among some of the heirs, many are constantly starting new businesses of their own, in addition to taking care of the family wealth.
For example, third-ranked Angela Bennett inherited the iron ore business of her father, Peter Wright. Through family offices, Bennett has invested extensively in the real estate, infrastructure and energy sectors. Rising iron ore prices and other investments benefited from its wealth (estimated) from $3.7 billion to $4.5 billion.
In Australia, mining and technology are arguably the industries that have produced the most billionaires, but the technology industry is "catching up".
From the overall trend point of view, the level of science and technology wealth creation is relatively higher. The most notable example of tech enrichment is melanie Perkins, who ranked second.
The post-80s (born 1987) Asian woman and her husband Cliff Obrecht founded the graphic design platform Canva in Perth. As the main sponsor of the project and the company's chief executive officer (CEO), Perkins has always played the most important role in the company's operations.
Melanie Perkins (right) and Cliff Obrecht (left) at the beginning of their business, photo/SMH
Benefiting from the growth of Canva's business and soaring valuations (currently $55 billion), Perkins jumped to second place with a value of $8.2 billion, up 10 places from last year.
Robyn Denholm, ranked 20th, has held key positions in automotive and technology companies for many years, such as Teltra's chief operating officer (COO). In 2018, he succeeded Musk as chairman of Tesla's board. She is also a partner at Blackbird, a prominent Australian venture capital firm.
In 2021, Denholm cashed out about $170 million after selling a portion of Tesla's stake, becoming a billionaire. Add to this equity interest, Denholm Wealth estimates $1.1 billion, up 72% from $643 million last year.
Robyn Denholm, Chairman of Tesla's Board of Directors, Photo/Blackbird
Changes in the company's market capitalization affect the ranking of the rich list
With the ups and downs of technology stocks, the ups and downs of iron ore prices, and the ranking of wealth is constantly changing.
This is even more obvious if one looks at the full list of the rich, including men.
Each year, the AFR ranks Australia's 200 richest individuals and families. Rinehart topped the list for the second year in a row, but its position has begun to be challenged by tech giants Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar.
Mike Cannon-Brookes (right) and Scott Farquhar (left), photo/Forbes
Based on iron ore prices and nasdaq performance, Rinehart and iron ore giant Andrew Forrest and Atlassian co-founders Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar also have a flurry of wealth rankings, with the four entrepreneurs each sitting on a fortune of about $30 billion.
If the rich list were announced today (March 8), Rinehart and Forrest would be ranked higher in wealth, with Forrest estimated at $28.1 billion, up from Cannon-Brookes' $27.8 billion and Farquhar's $26.3 billion.
But for a time at the end of last year, the technology duo even made Australia number one and two on the richest list as a result of soaring Atlassian shares and falling iron ore prices.
Of course, in January this year, due to the sell-off of the technology sector and the rebound in iron ore prices, the two iron ore rich people successfully overtook.
While most tech stocks have plummeted, some tech companies are still trading higher than in 2020, which means that the value of some company founders has doubled.
Logistics software group WiseTech, for example, had a share price of about $30 at the end of 2020, but at one point it soared to nearly $60 at the end of 2021. WiseTech shares are still likely to rise if the current systemic risks in global markets fade, and its low-key co-founder Maree Isaacs could squeeze into the top ten in the future, with her wealth now estimated to have soared 30 per cent to $552 million.
Isaacs founded WiseTech in 1994 with Richard White and is now the Executive Director overseeing the Group's license management. Isaacs owns more than $500 million worth of equity in the company and receives dividends worth more than $40 million.
WiseTech Executive Director Maree Isaacs, Photo/WiseTech
In addition, Joan Essman, who debuted on the list this year, also belongs to the "technology to create wealth".
Joan Essman and husband Thor Essman are behind Versent, which helps businesses run Amazon Cloud Services.
Accounts filed with corporate regulators show Versent's revenue soared to $99.7 billion in the 2020-21 financial year. The Rich List research team estimates that Joan Essman and husband Thor Essman have a combined net worth of $584 million, ranking 46th.
A half-share worth $292 million, according to her LinkedIn, is a former IBM customer executive who served as Versent's sales and marketing director until November.
Entrepreneurship and investment in real estate can also come to wealth
Of course, in addition to mining and technology, starting a business in a field where you are good at it, or investing in real estate, can also bring wealth to women.
The best example is another rich list "newcomer", Queensland celebrity Sarina Russo, whose wealth accumulation comes from a combination of the two.
Russo founded Sarina Russo Group, an employment services firm that bears his name, to rank 50th with a wealth valuation of $267 million.
Sarina Russo，图/Brisbane Times
A former legal secretary and spelling teacher, Russo opened a school in 1979 to help graduates find jobs. Her company achieved a net profit of $10.6 million in 2020 and paid a dividend of $11.9 million in 2019, according to corporate documents.
Much of her wealth also benefits from a large real estate portfolio, which includes dozens of residential and commercial properties from Brisbane to Sydney and Melbourne.
Russo, who was born in Italy, has said her "golden rule" is not to sell properties easily. Her first commercial real estate investment was in 1993, when she purchased a $2 million, 12-storey property as the company's place of business.
The number of female directors in Australia has increased
Although in the list of the richest 200 people in Australia, the number of women has gradually increased in recent years. But the boards of Australia's top businesses, the major corporations, have long been criticized for their lack of diversity, and many public companies have mostly senior men and only a handful of women.
But Nicola Wakefield Evans, one of Australia's most prominent female business leaders and a director at companies such as Lendlease and Macquarie, noted that board diversity reforms have begun to pay off as shareholders and other social groups have asked boards to appoint more members with diverse backgrounds. "There are a lot of women, and certainly men, who are holding key positions in ASX public companies for the first time," she said.
Data analysis by the Chief Executive Women australia and the Australian Company Directors Association (AICD) shows that Australian businesses have made progress in gender diversity.
For the first time, the boards of ASX 200 listed companies finally have at least one female director. The proportion of women on corporate boards in Australia rose to 33.7 per cent from 8.3 per cent in 2009, up from 29.9 per cent in the US.
The progress of society is never achieved overnight, but is often a gradual process that requires the efforts of each of our participants.
Aocai wishes all female readers and friends a happy International Women's Day, and hopes that in the future, more and more successful Chinese women will appear in our field of vision.
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