March 20, 2025 • 35 mins
It now takes more than $600m to even feature on the Australian’s Rich 250: But what does it take to build a fortune of that size in 2025? Today we get an inside view on the people behind Australia’s greatest fortunes.
John Stensholt, Rich 250 editor joins James Kirby Associate Editor - Wealth in this week’s episode
In this episode, we cover
- Rich 250 - The Chemist Warehouse family arrives
- Rich 250 - Offshore gambling empires: A new way to make money
- Billionaires might be impressive, but are they happy?
- Should you listen to ‘wealth coaches’?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, one, Welcome to The Australian's Money Puzzled podcast. I'm
James Kirkby. Welcome aboard everybody. Just before we start the show,
I would like to invite everyone who might be thinking
of sending in a question. And we get questions all
the time every day and they're very welcome. But you
now have a new facility that if you have a question,
you can send it in the form of a voice
(00:29):
memo and we'll broadcast your voice asking your question live
on air. It's a great idea from our producer Liah Sammagloup,
and I think you should take advantage of it. Okay,
now we have one or two have come in already,
which is great. Let's have a few more and we'll
get them rolling very soon. I think it'll be terrific
sort of development down the show. Now, today's show is
(00:50):
one of my favorite shows of the year. My guest
is John sten Solti's the editor, of course, of the
Rich to Fifty List, which is out Friday, the twenty
first of March. John and I go back a long way,
long long way back to we go so far back
that we worked on the magazine. Everyone has forgotten how
about that. That would be one way to describe the
(01:12):
working relationship. And I've just had a look at this
great new edition of the Rich to Fifty. There's got
this guy on the cover, Lawrence Escalante, of this virtual
gaming group, and he seems to be I thought he
was throwing money around, but he's throwing cards around standing
on this infinity pool. It rivals last year's unforgettable cover
(01:32):
of Lambeauman Adrian Portelly eating a burger on the bonnet
of his Lamborghini. That particularly classic shot you had their
last year, John Hawaii. And how's the whole list going
for you?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Very well? James, thank you and Lawrence and several members
of this list probably weren't even in business when we
started working together. I want to say how long ago.
I just both, but.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
I've met fortunes during our careers. But it's great fun
watching them, John, because I do follow the list very closely,
and we've got him in the studio in Sydney today.
It's marvelous to be able to do a special show
on it. There's so many strands to this, John. So
this guy undercover Escalante. If I look at the top
of the list and I'm assuming that most of our
(02:18):
listeners know, by the way already who is on the
top of the list. Because the very rich, the sort
of super rich of Australia to some extent, it doesn't change. John,
just tell us who the top three or four are,
just to remind everybody.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, of course, I mean Jane and Royan high that
Morning Magnate is number one round forty six billion dollars.
It's a huge amount. Handcock Prospecting is a financial powerhouse.
We know that missus Royan hudders if he ran callser
is extremely wealthy.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
She's become very high profile, and she was a low
profile for a long time. People didn't even know who
she was. They knew the Hancock family. But she's really
become high profile.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
She is, she is becoming higher profile without really you know,
saying a lot, if that makes sense. She's starting to
sort of throw away around a bit politically. You know,
she's backing pit parties, being a very big Donald Trump fan,
for example in America. Yeah, she's not the one to
sort of sit down and do a tell all interview
unfortunately anytime soon. But you never know.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
You have a question, you do I suppose, yeah, of.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Course, And I've seen her at the Olympics, and she
does all sorts of other different things. So yeah, she's
number one by a mile, right, a perennial one until
the are all price plunges. I'm not sure it ever will, James.
Maybe that's another topic for another day.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
But what I would say, it never would. But I
mean at the price that she can produce the iron
ore and the price it serves on the market, I
think she's probably comfortably ensconced there for a while. Okay,
so she's number one, and who else is there?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
So Harry Trigabov number two about thirty one billion dollars,
so if you think about that, it's about fifteen billion
dollars less than Gina, so that's a very big gap.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
So he's better because of Maritime.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Merton, Sydney Apartment's King ninety three years young, still going strong,
still charging around his building sites every day, still making
a lot of money from building property and particularly renting
out property. It's basically the biggest owner of hotel rooms
down through service departments here in Australia as well. So
if he if he builds them, and he is always
building them, and he wants to build more he's always
frustrated about government red tape and so on. Builds them,
(04:06):
either sells them or rents them out. So either way
he's doing very well.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Fabulous story and in your magazine you did send that
story more than once. But Harry Trick above story listeners,
if you ever get a chance, it is something else.
I think he was born was he like a Russian
out of Russia into China and he was born in Tensin.
Have I got that right?
Speaker 2 (04:27):
His Jewish family was living there during the thirties, and
you know there was a substantial publication then got out
from Russia previously and they sent Harry to Sydney to
go to school, and he went back and found me
textile business for all and came back to Sydney Land
of opportunity sixty two years now. I think it is
since he started Merriton, which was named after a street
in northern Sydney that he built first couple of apartments on,
(04:50):
and he's built a lot since he keeps building.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Yes, and most people, I'm sure I have stayed in
some Meriton apartments if you were traveling. So that's Harry Chigabov.
Maybe in some ways he represents maybe that among the
last of this extraordinary generation of immigrants that came to
Australia post war, who was upon a time dominated this
list that John produces the rich two fifty in the
(05:14):
Australian Friday. But now it's changing a lot. John. It
seems to me you have Anthony Pratt there, you have
a trigger Boff, you have Gina Ryan Hart and some
of the other sort of familiar names, including the Canva
people there in the top ten, aren't there the Melanie
and Cliff and who just round out the ten for
us there? Who else haven't we mentioned?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yes, we've got Mike cannon Brooks and Scott Farquha, the
Atlassian co founders of the Grand Old Age. I think
they're forty five now, so I mean they're yeah, almost
twenty nine billion dollars each. Mike's slightly above Scott. They're
probably pretty similar, right, but MIC's they've all got. They've
both got sort of other investments now that sort of
boost up their wealth a bit as well. But that
is an ongoing success story.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
They're extraordinary amounts of money, I mean, kind of hard
for the average person to grapple with. Now you think
about all this is shoe and about three million in
super and then you hear about these guys who up
to anty billion dollars plus the Canon Brooks for entertainment value. Folks,
He being very vocal on all sorts of environmental issues
(06:15):
for a long time, went and bought a private jet
of Liz. Is that right? Yes?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
For me, he wouldn't be the only person on the
list with a private jet James, of course, but he's
probably not. He's probably one of the few on the
lists who's been quite valuable about green energy and carbon
issues and so on. But he's gone and got a jet.
He talked about being for privacy, it was more security
issues was one of the things he considered in this
sort of tell all LinkedIn post, which is again another
(06:40):
modern way of communicating, isn't it. I have to say
though I did see him at the Melbourne Grand Prix
last weekend. It wasn't much security around him as he
walked the corridors of the corporate swedes. But yeah, maybe
he's a bit different out there in the great unwashed.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Of airports, struggling struggling around in the rain at the
Grand Prix. So these are the very familiar figures now
one thing I think is very interesting with the list
this year and every year, it's different. When I look
at the very top. These are the very wealthy, extraordinary
wealthy people, three of them, and the three who would
appear at first glance to be among the youngest. When
I say youngest on the rich list, well if you
(07:13):
mentioned Harry Trigobovs in his nineties and he's number two.
But these three people, Laurence Escalente who's on the cover,
Adrian Partelly who was on the cover last year, the
Lambeau Man who all you have to do is read
the metros or listen to the radio or television entertainment
news to hear about him. And there's one more, Tim Heath.
(07:34):
The three of them, they're all in one way or another,
these massive fortunes. They're all in gambling, right, and the
three of them are mostly making their money outside Australia.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, it's right as in there I should.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Have mentioned Ed Craven because his empire, apart from gambling
and crypto, it does overlap into investing a little bit.
You can buy shares and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
So just to be clear, it's strictly gambling, but he
also has this streaming service as well, so you've got
so yeah, so you've got the three yeah gambling slash,
let's call it sweepstakes model with escalante, right, if it's
probably a way around these sort of you know, the
gamings of you know laws of America. Yes, all of
them make their money outside Australia because Australia, I mean
(08:17):
they were a nation of gamblers. You see all the
ads and so on TV, and so you can't actually
gamble with cryptocurrency in Australia, right, there's still banned. So
these guys have probably taken that Australian acumen and when
it comes to gambling and apps and so on and
so forth, and gone out and conquered the world. Now
that's that also probably encapsulates how you can do that
these days with technology and you can build a global
(08:37):
business from Australia. So yes, they in particular Tim Heath
a lot of cryptocurrency gambling with clients in South America,
in the Middle East, a lot of cashed up people there.
So his operation, he's got a couple of them, be
cause he's got what's called bit casino and also sports
bet dot Io, So there's online casino Games with Tim
(08:58):
Heath and also online Bookmate with his other business, and
than Ed Craven with Steak, which is basically an online
sports book and casino business as well. And then you've
got Escalante with the virtual gaming worlds. He's got Chumper
Casinos one of his brands, which is in America, which
mostly America, sorry, mostly North America, and that's more a
(09:19):
gaming sort of experience. So all of that, these guys
are worth, let's say roughly combined eight nine billion dollars.
Well the two of them are in their forties. Ed
Craven's only twenty nine, and yeah, they've made all this
money from Australia, but actually from overseas.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
That's amazing, is it, And to some extent m of
the money overseas because well, for a start, they couldn't
actually operate here in the fashion that they operate overseas.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, exactly. I mean Craven's now sort of putting out
the feelers. We spotted him the other week in Darwin
talking to the local bookmaking authorities there. That's where you
get your license when you're in Australia. So he is
now going on the straight and narrow if you want
to say that inverted Comma is taking more bets in
feet currency. That's what these people call it old money
to you, and I yeah, exactly right, So he's sort
(10:02):
of doing that. But mostly yeah, it's still mostly that
online world. Outside Australia, there's guys are young, they're very successful,
they have very sort of roller coaster ride lives that
puff of it's on social media as well.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
They colorful lives, they really do. I suppose in a
way it's a well you might think it's inevitable, but
once upon a time the rich List, when you're in
early days with when you did it, I think there
was a lot of people who weren't boring as such,
but they certainly weren't as interesting are colorful as some
of the people who are in the upper reaches in
the upper decks these days. One of the things that
(10:37):
also strikes me is it seems to me if you
look at the list, I mean, I'm just glancing at
it here and I see various people who would be
well known were on the list for a long time.
Frank Lois, which was Westfield once upon a time, Kerry
Stooke's Channel seven and West Track, Caterpillar, etc. These are
always there, Alan Wilson, is that the Reef's family, the plumbing.
(10:57):
That's a good example of a pretty boring business. But
what people seem to be interested in, John, even though
some of these characters are much deeper down the list, right,
they're not as worthy as some of these family names
that are not so well. It seems to me that
younger readers investors are more interested in the younger set
(11:18):
than the old set, or like the old guard.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Is that your experience, Yeah, definitely, And the readership is
much bigger for the stories that reveal new names or
talk about the youngsters that you know. And when we
say youngsters, people in the twenties, thirties, forties, right, I
mean the revelations of how they've made their money so
quickly and interestingly as well in a very interesting manner,
very new age manner. A lot of it's technology based. Example,
(11:44):
we've talked about Canva. Those sort of people always get
really big readerships, and they often have very interesting backstories,
very quol. I mean, everyone's got an interesting backstory in
a way. But I mean Escalante might be forty three,
but he's already had a career flipping burgers, at Hungry Jacks.
He did paraplanning. When he was in his twenties, he
did financial planning. He had a Christian games business, you know,
(12:06):
that didn't quite make it because the publisher in America
that he had didn't do a very good job with it,
so he pivoted to virtual gaming. Was So they've all
got those sort of really interesting stories that it can
be slightly relatable. I mean, there's a lot of people
that have flipped burgers at Hungary Jackson McDonald's right, and
this guy's done it, and now he's gone and done this.
So that's where I think where you get that interest.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Has that appeal that it promises the great promise which
Australia provides to this day. And I suppose it proves
it where Harry Chigobov came in in Whenever the nineteen
sixties and arrived with a suitcase got on the list.
And similarly, these this new generation have come out of
nowhere flipping burgers one day and twenty years later there
on the list. So it's still possible. I suppose that's
(12:49):
what people like.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Oh absolutely like. If you take someone like a Robin Cooter,
for example, with air trunk which got sold for twenty
four billion dollars. This is the data center's business, right,
So this is the data center's guy who got investment
from Quarry. It was several billion dollars last year with
data centers as going crazy because of artificial intelligence and
we need all this data, and so he keeps building
these data centers. Now they sort of look boring, right,
(13:11):
they're just like big data centery things buildings, right, But
he's moved pretty quickly. He does a really good job
rolling out several around the world, sells it for twenty
four billion dollars last year. So what's his backstory. He's
in his forties. His parents are from Bangladesh. He's from
Bangladesh as well. Effectively he was their great hope, right.
They saved their money to send him to Australia to
(13:32):
get an education. We've got a feature in the magazine
where he talks about my parents better on me, right
to make it. He had some pressure on himself to
do that. Yeah, So he comes out and counting as
this sort of classic what migrants do when they come
to study here in Australia, works sort of menial jobs,
gets a job in financial services and then into new
age sort of data center sort of things where you know,
(13:54):
he parlays his skills into that. But again he talked
about where he was very close to calling in the
ministry is in his early days in business, sweating over
that for I think it was during Christmas time and
stuff all that. So again that's his parents bet on him,
send him to another country to get an education. He
makes good here along the way. He still has some
(14:14):
pretty tough business ups and downs.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Right, this is Robin Kuda and the business was air Trunk.
That was the one, of course, folks that were sold
possibly at the top of the AI driven data center boom,
which has driven companies like next DC, et cetera of
recent times, and even might I say the Goodman Group,
which if you were wondering whether air Trunk could have
(14:39):
been sold for as much today, I wonder. Goodman is
of course terrific property trust, but has had a premium
for a long time because it's a data center play.
It had a big rights issue just recently. It closed
last week. The rights issue was offered at a higher
price than the share price and guess what, well, smartly enough,
virtually no retail investors took it up rightly, So why
(15:00):
would you go into a writ tissue if you could
buy the shares for lists. It's just a little anecdote
about that area data centers. And I think one of
the extra things John will take a break now. But
one of the extra things about these people when you
meet them, you assume a whole lot. They are obsessive,
they're marvelous, they're focused. You can assume a lot of things,
(15:22):
but one of the things they seem to have sometimes
is this magic sense of timing. And a lot of
the fortunes on the list would some of them it's
a lifetime my chemist wharehouse. They could have sold it
this year, next year, ten years ago. But some of
them just said, have that marvelous extra talent of knowing
when to push the button to sell or I will
take short break back in a moment. Hello, Welcome back
(15:53):
to The Australian's Money Puzzle podcast. I'm James Kirby talking
in this episode specially episode. We do this every year
and it's one of my favorite shows. It's John Stencil,
the Rich two fifty editor, and he is taking us
through the Rich two fifty edition, which is out tomorrow.
(16:14):
Now we in the first part of the show, Folks,
we talked a little bit about some of the for
the people at the very top of the list who
you would be familiar with, some of the new crew
that are coming through, some of them in gaming, in gambling,
some of them in much more conventional businesses, quite boring
businesses like data centers which you can make a fortune
from too. And we mentioned in passing the Gans family.
(16:38):
Now there's a couple of families. This is Chemists Warehouse, Folks,
which is the big float of the year, and everyone
knows Chemist Square House, and suddenly I see dotted through
the list John the people who were involved with it.
Tell us a little bit about who's behind Chemist Square
House and how they all arrive on the rich list
this year.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
There's actually six people from Chemists wa the two fifty.
How do you believe, James, So do two families, the
Gance family and the Verrocki family. So it starts with
jacket Sam Gance back in the gritty Melbourne suburb of
Reservoir back in the seventies and early eighties. And the
guy comes along who's got a chemist a degree called
(17:18):
Mario Varocki, and he wants a job and they hire
him as their sort of I guess apprentice.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Right, So he's the qualified chemist and they're the two
entrepreneur brothers, okay, and they're Polish originally.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I know they're the European originally. They also quite entrepreneurial, right,
they start buying chemist stuff, but they also had the
Laspecs and Latane brands back in the eighties as well
in nineties, which are fantastic sun cream and sunglasses brands.
So they do that, and then in about two thousands
they start what we know now today is the chemist
where House business. Right now, it's been very private. I
(17:49):
mean Jack has told me personally he hates the rich list.
Mario very good, he's always very nice about it, emails
me back at no comment, and I don't want to
talk about it. It'd be great if I'm not on
the lid. But so they've been on the list for
a while a few years now. But then Chemist's Warehouse
wants to go public Mother Wealth, right, so they engineer
(18:11):
this effectively a reverse takeover of the already listed Sigma Healthcare.
Now as a result of that, something like eighty or
ninety percent of the private Chemist Warehouse shareholders now become
Sigma shareholders, including several members of their family, one of
them being Damien Gants, who's the chief commercial officer, who's
Sam Ganser's son. He's a billionaire in our list this
(18:32):
year now thanks to his Sigma shares.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
And thanks to this process back which they turned the
private company into a publicly listed company, through what they
used to call it a reverse takeover of the Sigma Group,
which is listed on the Start market, you were able
to see how much everyone had.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yes, right, yes, thanks to this scheme of arrangement booklets, James,
I mean, I don't know who else looks through those,
but that's what I do. So several other members of
the Verrocki family as well, Marcello and Adrian brothers. They've
roughly at nine hundred million dollars or so stock each.
There's several other executives and family members who just missed
the list, two that are worth four five hundred million,
(19:10):
two hundred three hundred million on paper.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
What does it take to get on the list.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
It takes through six hundred and thirty five million now
this year. It's a very high cutoff.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Oh my god, six hundred and five minutes to get
on folks. So don't feel if you know someone terribly
wealthy and you say they'll be on the list and
they're not, well, they might be a both only five
hundred million. Keep that in mind. That's the Gants and
Baroki family who were behind Chemist Warehouse, and that's a
great story. I presumed the chemist skills and everything else
did not like them, did not like their sort of
(19:42):
commoditization of chemist shops. How do they get it through
the system?
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Ye, there's been a lot of regulatory sort of battles
over the years, and they've really just sort of almost
punched through all those and just kept sort of persevering
and kept growing almost in despite what the sort of
protective nature of the chemist business or the chemist industry
has done. I mean, effectively, if you walk into a
chemists warehouse, it's a big retail sort of outlet, isn't
It's a big shop with a chemist at the chemist
(20:07):
at the back. So that's really what it is. Stack
them high and sell them low and all that sort
of ratel success story.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
It's amazing. There's one in every I mean, it seems
to me there's one in every suburban strip in Australia and.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
There's plenty of growth throughout Iver says, and still in Australia.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
And as you say, when I saw that history of
getting through all hurdles, when I saw all the debate
about whether they'd ever get their reverse takeover up and
whether Stigma will get through and whether they get the
deal done, I remember thinking, these guys have gone. These
guys have gone from a shop in the suburb of
Melbourne to a multi billion dollar chain. They are not
(20:42):
going to be stopped by any regulatory hurdle at the
last lap when they go to cash out their fortunes
as they are entitled to by going on the stock market. Okay,
that's the Kansas and they are suddenly a cohort of
their own. The two families behind the Chemists warehouse on
this year's list, and they've arrived. You've found some other people.
There's a guy called Michael daldy or In. He appears
(21:07):
out of the blue with a bullets at number thirteen
at an estimate of thirteen point five billion billion dollars.
Never heard of him? Who on earth is he? And
how does he squeeze in between Frank Lloyd and Carry
Stokes And we've never heard of him.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
This is an incredible story. I mean, Mike is an
uzzie guy on Wall Street and he has got a
business called stone Peak and invests in infrastructure around the world.
It's almost like a mini mcquarie model.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
So hecquary and he went to the US.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
He exactly took that model over to the US. Worked
with mcquarie in the US for a while. It's a
great story about how it wasn't. He claims he didn't
do very well at UNI, but he managed to talk
his way in too Mcquarie as a cadet by going
along to their sort of drinks networking session spends. If
he is there doing really well, goes over to America
with them with taking that mcquarie sort of buying toll
roads and poles and wires and all this sort of
(21:57):
infrastructure assets and wrapping them up and someone management fees
all that sort of thing. It goes out on his
own with a business partner. The global financial crisis hit,
so they don't really have much business for a couple
of years. Decided that they had a big backer. Then
they pretty much didn't really know what to do other
than keep working away. They had this crucial moment where
they end up in Olympia in Washington State sort of
(22:19):
talking to the local state pension fund about investing a
couple hundred million dollars into their business. They managed to
get the money and away they go. And it's built
very quietly. We wouldn't even know about it.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
And is it green energy or all energy?
Speaker 2 (22:31):
All sorts of energy, all sorts of ports and different
infrastructure sort of assets. Now, I mean they've even owned
New Zealand age care homes, you know, this sort of
what I guess what they think is pretty steady income
sort of, and they have about seven seventy odd billion
dollars US in assets under management or under administration. The
(22:54):
business is actually worth. It got a US sort of
fifteen billion dollar valuation when a private equ he fund
bought into it last year. That's where you got That's
where I got the numbers from. Before then, we didn't
know about Mike. But the really interesting thing about Mark
is that he also we got a bit of publicity
about him last year when he bought her just a
small one hundred and fifty million dollar mansion in Palm Beach,
(23:14):
just just around the corner from Mary Lago James, which
I've actually seen is very nice.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
All right, right, all right, interesting story, Michael Dorral. That
is interesting to you talking about how he talked his
way into mcquarie. I remember was upon a time Quarry
famously has this very difficult entry tests McCrary bank, that is, folks,
and you have to pass all these tests like iq EQ,
rose arch tests, my briggs, my briggs, et cetera. And
(23:41):
I was working with someone on the commercial side who
was ex McQuary bank, and we were hiring someone and
he wanted to give them these tests. And I been
coming up through media, had no experience whatsoever of this
end of things. And I can tell you that we
still don't have anything like that when you're recruited media
at any level. But interestingly, we did the test and
(24:04):
someone I liked did badly on the tests, and this
ex maccori guy said, don't go against the tests. Every
time I went against the test, it blew up, and
we didn't. And apparently that is a thing. They're very strong,
and how you get into an investment bank is you
have to climb over quite a lot of hurdles, including
those tests. So it's really interesting about our friend Michael Daryl.
(24:26):
I wondered did he really get in sort of a
side door of from Maccarier or did he not? That
could be something for you to find out for next year. Okay,
now also new entrance. This just I find this completely entertaining.
There's a chap who has managed to be a debutante
on the list and he's ninety years old. Tell us
(24:47):
about him.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yes, Andreas Andreanopolis, who's a Greek margareant, lives in Melbourne.
He has built up these big network of petrol stations
for decades.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
But they're not under his name.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Well, they're under a business A Holdings, which just sounds
so vanilla. It doesn't no idea what it was, but
it just happened to pop up on one of this
hot highest taxpayers lists that the ATO puts out, and
I wonder what is this company? And due to recent
changes by the federal government the last couple of years,
a lot of these private companies have started having to
(25:18):
lodge their financial orts with set.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
They are finally doing it, and they finally do it.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
So A Holdings puts one up and all of a
sudden it's like wow, there's hundreds of millions of dollars
in this business from this pretty humble guy and if
he gets a bit of attention in the local Greek media,
very big philanthropy and just this business that just just
kept working away. Again another classic migrant success story, I think, Jane,
but very quietly done his thing.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Isn't that fantastic? What a great story you've dug up there,
You've excavated from the Assic files. And of course again
I was a little bit cynical that they would ever
get anything out of private companies, because that's why people
keep them private. So Nick Andrianachus and family one point
billion in there at number eighty eight and very much
an unknown quantity until today. Okay, well take short break.
(26:07):
We'll be back in a moment with some questions. Hello,
Welcome back to The Australian's Money Puzzle podcast. I'm James
Kirby and I'm talking to John Stencil and we are
talking about the ever interesting Rich to fifty list. Interesting
(26:28):
from a money point of view. From an investment point
of view, some people love to back people in their investments.
You have these founder led funds where people just say
I trust the person rather than the company, and they
get behind them, and some of those companies go a
long way. You look at the top of the list,
I mean wise check us up there for instance, which
is very much attached to one person, Richard White, who,
by George isn't going to give up that company easy,
(26:50):
that's for sure. But I was wondering with you, John,
when you're looking at this, I'm just wondering whether I
read about as a guy to follow. It was a
very interesting man. He died a few years ago. His
name was Felix Dennis, fascinating guy. Australians might remember. Australians
are interested in nineteen sixties culture, might remember there was
(27:13):
a famous magazine called oz oh Z and there was
all these extraordinary people linked with it, and they had
a famous trial in the UK way back. A lot
of famous Australians came out of that trial. But the
person behind the publisher of oz was a man called
Pheenix Tennis, and he later, as a multi millionaire, wrote
(27:33):
a book called How to Get Rich. But it's actually
a very sad book, almost about how he was a
cocaine addict. He was never happy. He had a fortune
of one hundred million or so and a long tail
of misery laced with a lot of money. And I
just wonder John about what these people have in common,
whether they are what are their common qualities. I know
(27:58):
it's really hard to answer that this, but that's a
bit more about them as a corehurt Well.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
I guess there's that notions of perseverance and high energy
and coming back from stepbacks and all that sort of
thing that you know, being smart and with their timing
and highly intelligent. I think that's the richest to fifty list, James,
but it's not necessarily the happy two fifty year old.
I mean that there's a lot of trials and tribulations
that come with being wealthy. I'm not saying we need
to feel sorry for them, but you can just think.
I just know that when I write about them for
(28:23):
the rest of the year, so to speak. In my
normal job, there's a lot of increasing amount of court
cases and disputes that we cover in terms of who's
going to get the money or why hasn't this person
got that? So that's the I think that's the coming
tide of how do you deal with having a big
amount of wealth, How do you deal with your kids?
Speaker 1 (28:41):
How do your kids deal with it?
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Exactly right?
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Do you think angst is more common in the second generation.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
I think it is. I mean, there's been some very
high profile issues with mental health concerns. James Packerson is
the Springs to America.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
And we mentioned the Rhinehart family who've been in and
out of court, mentioned the Pratt who I've have been
in court. That is in the Pratt side and well
in the Hancock's side, Gina Hinhardt side. There's long running
core cases. Yeah. So, and then the other thing is like,
even if they have their act together, even if they
(29:15):
are well balanced, well adjusted people, other people treat them differently.
They can't be treated normally, can they.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
No, it's a verified error, I suppose. So there's a
cohort of people around these people that I guess say
yes to them a lot. Probably, you know, that's what
they've got to, that position of power and wealth. You
see that relationship that people have with politicians, that sort
of courting power in that way or having the power
caught them in a political sense. So there is that
notion that they are above everyone else in a whole
(29:47):
bunch of ways rather than just the money side.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Yeah, everyone probably wants something from them. There's some people
would be familiar with that across time. But as you said,
we have these next generations coming through. The most obvious
ones been Prass, Packer, the Lowis, et cetera. These are
old families that have been on the list for a
long time, but as you say, it's not necessarily the
happy list, So pro rata, I suppose more of them
(30:11):
end up in court with their siblings than perhaps the
average sample on the street. Okay, because the nature of
your arrival on the show, John, it being so special,
I have curated some very special questions for you, just
one or two, but I wanted to put this to
you and folks. One thing I haven't sort of mentioned
(30:32):
on the show before is when the questions come in,
of course from you all, which are great, and they
come in every day to the money puzzle at the
Australian dot Com dot you also I get a torrent
of unwanted people request to come on the show, asking
to come on some one in ten maybe I would
even think about. But a lot of them I don't
want to even talk about or talk to. And I
(30:55):
thought i'd asked John, I'm just going to read out John,
this is something that's typical thing that came in during
the week. I'm going to scrub out the person's name.
It's this piece of correspondent says mister X was in
debt after the tenants trashed the investment property, but rather
than letting it ruin him, it changed his life. In
just four years, this Brisbane based investor flipped twenty seven properties,
(31:20):
built a four million portfolio, made two million in profit
and launched I love this last bit, a half a
million a month coaching business. And now he's on a
mission to teach us all how to build wealth. Now,
the reason I bring this up is I don't know
this person. I don't want to know this person. There's
(31:40):
piles of them out there, but a lot of our
listeners and a lot of everyday Australians that's the rich list.
They see it. They admire those people. These people arrive
in front of them and they promise rich riches made
fast and easy.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
The sacreds of making your success. I'm not sure whether
that five hundred a month is his income from the
coaching or that's what he's charging. So either way, it's
pretty outrageous if you were to call it that. Yeah,
you're right. There's the notions of seminars to how to
build your property wealth and that sort of thing that
cropped up and never ran. There's a lot of this
(32:15):
stuff and I feel that that look firstly, you know,
you really have to get qualified advice on a whole
bunch of things.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
But what only have the people on this list ever
go and listen to a coach talking about flipping properties
and how much they've made from coaching themselves, from coaching
others to make money. I mean, would only have the
people on to anything.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Like this, No, not in a million years, but their
kids go with their next generation. No, I think, I
think you've got to weed out. I mean that would
be just very skeptical about this sort of thing. There's
a lot of hangers on. There's a lot of people
trying to sort of learn about these things that I
think the best thing really you've got to take advice
in the mainstream. You could probably learn just as much
from reading the Riches to fifty and pulling out the
key lessons from what the successful people have done. And
(32:55):
there's always quite a few perennial things overcoming setbacks and
forcing the moments that you don't necessarily need to fork
out tens of thousands of dollars for But I think
even if you want to invest in something like this,
there's funds these days that invest in found all led companies.
Even that's some sort of a proxy for taking on
the advice or the acumen of founders or wealthy people.
(33:17):
So there's other avenues of doing it. But this notion
that wealth can be taught in this way is I
think it's a pretty false one.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Okay, I thought i'd put that question out there listeners.
I don't normally as I say, but I thought this
was the time to do it, because when we do
a show like this, to some extent, you have to
be careful. You don't necessarily want it. Well, you're championing
people on the rich list, but it's their business and
investment acumen, not necessarily we don't always know what they're
actually like. Just one that's saying, Luke asks, I was
(33:48):
wondering if we could have a deep dive into shares
versus property. I feel the main reason people believe property
outperforms is the leverage. Also the bank's willingness to provide
credit for property over shares. Yeah, you're onto something there, Luke,
Property versus shares, And then it's something that we could
talk We have a show about it every other month,
(34:10):
but we should have one about it because it comes
up all the time. And the first part I want
to make you is that this thing about that properly
because it's leverage, is something misleading. You can get leverage
on shares. You can negatively gear shares just as much
as easily as you can negatively gear property. In fact,
it would be considerably easier and less taxing in many ways.
But we will talk about that on Tuesday show, The
(34:32):
Budget Day Show with Anthony Keane coming up, and of
course we'll have the budget next week, which is March
twenty five. I have never recalled a budget where there
was so little in the way of leaks or information
or anticipation, probably because they say the government didn't want
to have it, but they're going to have it. And
(34:53):
I will be on with Will Hamilton and we will
do our annual budget show, and don't you worry, we
will find plenty to talk about until then. Thank you,
Thank you John stand Soult from The Rich two fifty.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Thank you James.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Great to have you in the studio today, and thank
you for listening.
Hello, one, Welcome to The Australian's Money Puzzled podcast. I'm
James Kirkby. Welcome aboard everybody. Just before we start the show,
I would like to invite everyone who might be thinking
of sending in a question. And we get questions all
the time every day and they're very welcome. But you
now have a new facility that if you have a question,
you can send it in the form of a voice
(00:29):
memo and we'll broadcast your voice asking your question live
on air. It's a great idea from our producer Liah Sammagloup,
and I think you should take advantage of it. Okay,
now we have one or two have come in already,
which is great. Let's have a few more and we'll
get them rolling very soon. I think it'll be terrific
sort of development down the show. Now, today's show is
(00:50):
one of my favorite shows of the year. My guest
is John sten Solti's the editor, of course, of the
Rich to Fifty List, which is out Friday, the twenty
first of March. John and I go back a long way,
long long way back to we go so far back
that we worked on the magazine. Everyone has forgotten how
about that. That would be one way to describe the
(01:12):
working relationship. And I've just had a look at this
great new edition of the Rich to Fifty. There's got
this guy on the cover, Lawrence Escalante, of this virtual
gaming group, and he seems to be I thought he
was throwing money around, but he's throwing cards around standing
on this infinity pool. It rivals last year's unforgettable cover
(01:32):
of Lambeauman Adrian Portelly eating a burger on the bonnet
of his Lamborghini. That particularly classic shot you had their
last year, John Hawaii. And how's the whole list going
for you?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Very well? James, thank you and Lawrence and several members
of this list probably weren't even in business when we
started working together. I want to say how long ago.
I just both, but.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
I've met fortunes during our careers. But it's great fun
watching them, John, because I do follow the list very closely,
and we've got him in the studio in Sydney today.
It's marvelous to be able to do a special show
on it. There's so many strands to this, John. So
this guy undercover Escalante. If I look at the top
of the list and I'm assuming that most of our
(02:18):
listeners know, by the way already who is on the
top of the list. Because the very rich, the sort
of super rich of Australia to some extent, it doesn't change. John,
just tell us who the top three or four are,
just to remind everybody.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, of course, I mean Jane and Royan high that
Morning Magnate is number one round forty six billion dollars.
It's a huge amount. Handcock Prospecting is a financial powerhouse.
We know that missus Royan hudders if he ran callser
is extremely wealthy.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
She's become very high profile, and she was a low
profile for a long time. People didn't even know who
she was. They knew the Hancock family. But she's really
become high profile.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
She is, she is becoming higher profile without really you know,
saying a lot, if that makes sense. She's starting to
sort of throw away around a bit politically. You know,
she's backing pit parties, being a very big Donald Trump fan,
for example in America. Yeah, she's not the one to
sort of sit down and do a tell all interview
unfortunately anytime soon. But you never know.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
You have a question, you do I suppose, yeah, of.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Course, And I've seen her at the Olympics, and she
does all sorts of other different things. So yeah, she's
number one by a mile, right, a perennial one until
the are all price plunges. I'm not sure it ever will, James.
Maybe that's another topic for another day.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
But what I would say, it never would. But I
mean at the price that she can produce the iron
ore and the price it serves on the market, I
think she's probably comfortably ensconced there for a while. Okay,
so she's number one, and who else is there?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
So Harry Trigabov number two about thirty one billion dollars,
so if you think about that, it's about fifteen billion
dollars less than Gina, so that's a very big gap.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
So he's better because of Maritime.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Merton, Sydney Apartment's King ninety three years young, still going strong,
still charging around his building sites every day, still making
a lot of money from building property and particularly renting
out property. It's basically the biggest owner of hotel rooms
down through service departments here in Australia as well. So
if he if he builds them, and he is always
building them, and he wants to build more he's always
frustrated about government red tape and so on. Builds them,
(04:06):
either sells them or rents them out. So either way
he's doing very well.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Fabulous story and in your magazine you did send that
story more than once. But Harry Trick above story listeners,
if you ever get a chance, it is something else.
I think he was born was he like a Russian
out of Russia into China and he was born in Tensin.
Have I got that right?
Speaker 2 (04:27):
His Jewish family was living there during the thirties, and
you know there was a substantial publication then got out
from Russia previously and they sent Harry to Sydney to
go to school, and he went back and found me
textile business for all and came back to Sydney Land
of opportunity sixty two years now. I think it is
since he started Merriton, which was named after a street
in northern Sydney that he built first couple of apartments on,
(04:50):
and he's built a lot since he keeps building.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Yes, and most people, I'm sure I have stayed in
some Meriton apartments if you were traveling. So that's Harry Chigabov.
Maybe in some ways he represents maybe that among the
last of this extraordinary generation of immigrants that came to
Australia post war, who was upon a time dominated this
list that John produces the rich two fifty in the
(05:14):
Australian Friday. But now it's changing a lot. John. It
seems to me you have Anthony Pratt there, you have
a trigger Boff, you have Gina Ryan Hart and some
of the other sort of familiar names, including the Canva
people there in the top ten, aren't there the Melanie
and Cliff and who just round out the ten for
us there? Who else haven't we mentioned?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yes, we've got Mike cannon Brooks and Scott Farquha, the
Atlassian co founders of the Grand Old Age. I think
they're forty five now, so I mean they're yeah, almost
twenty nine billion dollars each. Mike's slightly above Scott. They're
probably pretty similar, right, but MIC's they've all got. They've
both got sort of other investments now that sort of
boost up their wealth a bit as well. But that
is an ongoing success story.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
They're extraordinary amounts of money, I mean, kind of hard
for the average person to grapple with. Now you think
about all this is shoe and about three million in
super and then you hear about these guys who up
to anty billion dollars plus the Canon Brooks for entertainment value. Folks,
He being very vocal on all sorts of environmental issues
(06:15):
for a long time, went and bought a private jet
of Liz. Is that right? Yes?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
For me, he wouldn't be the only person on the
list with a private jet James, of course, but he's
probably not. He's probably one of the few on the
lists who's been quite valuable about green energy and carbon
issues and so on. But he's gone and got a jet.
He talked about being for privacy, it was more security
issues was one of the things he considered in this
sort of tell all LinkedIn post, which is again another
(06:40):
modern way of communicating, isn't it. I have to say
though I did see him at the Melbourne Grand Prix
last weekend. It wasn't much security around him as he
walked the corridors of the corporate swedes. But yeah, maybe
he's a bit different out there in the great unwashed.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Of airports, struggling struggling around in the rain at the
Grand Prix. So these are the very familiar figures now
one thing I think is very interesting with the list
this year and every year, it's different. When I look
at the very top. These are the very wealthy, extraordinary
wealthy people, three of them, and the three who would
appear at first glance to be among the youngest. When
I say youngest on the rich list, well if you
(07:13):
mentioned Harry Trigobovs in his nineties and he's number two.
But these three people, Laurence Escalente who's on the cover,
Adrian Partelly who was on the cover last year, the
Lambeau Man who all you have to do is read
the metros or listen to the radio or television entertainment
news to hear about him. And there's one more, Tim Heath.
(07:34):
The three of them, they're all in one way or another,
these massive fortunes. They're all in gambling, right, and the
three of them are mostly making their money outside Australia.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, it's right as in there I should.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Have mentioned Ed Craven because his empire, apart from gambling
and crypto, it does overlap into investing a little bit.
You can buy shares and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
So just to be clear, it's strictly gambling, but he
also has this streaming service as well, so you've got
so yeah, so you've got the three yeah gambling slash,
let's call it sweepstakes model with escalante, right, if it's
probably a way around these sort of you know, the
gamings of you know laws of America. Yes, all of
them make their money outside Australia because Australia, I mean
(08:17):
they were a nation of gamblers. You see all the
ads and so on TV, and so you can't actually
gamble with cryptocurrency in Australia, right, there's still banned. So
these guys have probably taken that Australian acumen and when
it comes to gambling and apps and so on and
so forth, and gone out and conquered the world. Now
that's that also probably encapsulates how you can do that
these days with technology and you can build a global
(08:37):
business from Australia. So yes, they in particular Tim Heath
a lot of cryptocurrency gambling with clients in South America,
in the Middle East, a lot of cashed up people there.
So his operation, he's got a couple of them, be
cause he's got what's called bit casino and also sports
bet dot Io, So there's online casino Games with Tim
(08:58):
Heath and also online Bookmate with his other business, and
than Ed Craven with Steak, which is basically an online
sports book and casino business as well. And then you've
got Escalante with the virtual gaming worlds. He's got Chumper
Casinos one of his brands, which is in America, which
mostly America, sorry, mostly North America, and that's more a
(09:19):
gaming sort of experience. So all of that, these guys
are worth, let's say roughly combined eight nine billion dollars.
Well the two of them are in their forties. Ed
Craven's only twenty nine, and yeah, they've made all this
money from Australia, but actually from overseas.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
That's amazing, is it, And to some extent m of
the money overseas because well, for a start, they couldn't
actually operate here in the fashion that they operate overseas.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, exactly. I mean Craven's now sort of putting out
the feelers. We spotted him the other week in Darwin
talking to the local bookmaking authorities there. That's where you
get your license when you're in Australia. So he is
now going on the straight and narrow if you want
to say that inverted Comma is taking more bets in
feet currency. That's what these people call it old money
to you, and I yeah, exactly right, So he's sort
(10:02):
of doing that. But mostly yeah, it's still mostly that
online world. Outside Australia, there's guys are young, they're very successful,
they have very sort of roller coaster ride lives that
puff of it's on social media as well.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
They colorful lives, they really do. I suppose in a
way it's a well you might think it's inevitable, but
once upon a time the rich List, when you're in
early days with when you did it, I think there
was a lot of people who weren't boring as such,
but they certainly weren't as interesting are colorful as some
of the people who are in the upper reaches in
the upper decks these days. One of the things that
(10:37):
also strikes me is it seems to me if you
look at the list, I mean, I'm just glancing at
it here and I see various people who would be
well known were on the list for a long time.
Frank Lois, which was Westfield once upon a time, Kerry
Stooke's Channel seven and West Track, Caterpillar, etc. These are
always there, Alan Wilson, is that the Reef's family, the plumbing.
(10:57):
That's a good example of a pretty boring business. But
what people seem to be interested in, John, even though
some of these characters are much deeper down the list, right,
they're not as worthy as some of these family names
that are not so well. It seems to me that
younger readers investors are more interested in the younger set
(11:18):
than the old set, or like the old guard.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Is that your experience, Yeah, definitely, And the readership is
much bigger for the stories that reveal new names or
talk about the youngsters that you know. And when we
say youngsters, people in the twenties, thirties, forties, right, I
mean the revelations of how they've made their money so
quickly and interestingly as well in a very interesting manner,
very new age manner. A lot of it's technology based. Example,
(11:44):
we've talked about Canva. Those sort of people always get
really big readerships, and they often have very interesting backstories,
very quol. I mean, everyone's got an interesting backstory in
a way. But I mean Escalante might be forty three,
but he's already had a career flipping burgers, at Hungry Jacks.
He did paraplanning. When he was in his twenties, he
did financial planning. He had a Christian games business, you know,
(12:06):
that didn't quite make it because the publisher in America
that he had didn't do a very good job with it,
so he pivoted to virtual gaming. Was So they've all
got those sort of really interesting stories that it can
be slightly relatable. I mean, there's a lot of people
that have flipped burgers at Hungary Jackson McDonald's right, and
this guy's done it, and now he's gone and done this.
So that's where I think where you get that interest.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Has that appeal that it promises the great promise which
Australia provides to this day. And I suppose it proves
it where Harry Chigobov came in in Whenever the nineteen
sixties and arrived with a suitcase got on the list.
And similarly, these this new generation have come out of
nowhere flipping burgers one day and twenty years later there
on the list. So it's still possible. I suppose that's
(12:49):
what people like.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Oh absolutely like. If you take someone like a Robin Cooter,
for example, with air trunk which got sold for twenty
four billion dollars. This is the data center's business, right,
So this is the data center's guy who got investment
from Quarry. It was several billion dollars last year with
data centers as going crazy because of artificial intelligence and
we need all this data, and so he keeps building
these data centers. Now they sort of look boring, right,
(13:11):
they're just like big data centery things buildings, right, But
he's moved pretty quickly. He does a really good job
rolling out several around the world, sells it for twenty
four billion dollars last year. So what's his backstory. He's
in his forties. His parents are from Bangladesh. He's from
Bangladesh as well. Effectively he was their great hope, right.
They saved their money to send him to Australia to
(13:32):
get an education. We've got a feature in the magazine
where he talks about my parents better on me, right
to make it. He had some pressure on himself to
do that. Yeah, So he comes out and counting as
this sort of classic what migrants do when they come
to study here in Australia, works sort of menial jobs,
gets a job in financial services and then into new
age sort of data center sort of things where you know,
(13:54):
he parlays his skills into that. But again he talked
about where he was very close to calling in the
ministry is in his early days in business, sweating over
that for I think it was during Christmas time and
stuff all that. So again that's his parents bet on him,
send him to another country to get an education. He
makes good here along the way. He still has some
(14:14):
pretty tough business ups and downs.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Right, this is Robin Kuda and the business was air Trunk.
That was the one, of course, folks that were sold
possibly at the top of the AI driven data center boom,
which has driven companies like next DC, et cetera of
recent times, and even might I say the Goodman Group,
which if you were wondering whether air Trunk could have
(14:39):
been sold for as much today, I wonder. Goodman is
of course terrific property trust, but has had a premium
for a long time because it's a data center play.
It had a big rights issue just recently. It closed
last week. The rights issue was offered at a higher
price than the share price and guess what, well, smartly enough,
virtually no retail investors took it up rightly, So why
(15:00):
would you go into a writ tissue if you could
buy the shares for lists. It's just a little anecdote
about that area data centers. And I think one of
the extra things John will take a break now. But
one of the extra things about these people when you
meet them, you assume a whole lot. They are obsessive,
they're marvelous, they're focused. You can assume a lot of things,
(15:22):
but one of the things they seem to have sometimes
is this magic sense of timing. And a lot of
the fortunes on the list would some of them it's
a lifetime my chemist wharehouse. They could have sold it
this year, next year, ten years ago. But some of
them just said, have that marvelous extra talent of knowing
when to push the button to sell or I will
take short break back in a moment. Hello, Welcome back
(15:53):
to The Australian's Money Puzzle podcast. I'm James Kirby talking
in this episode specially episode. We do this every year
and it's one of my favorite shows. It's John Stencil,
the Rich two fifty editor, and he is taking us
through the Rich two fifty edition, which is out tomorrow.
(16:14):
Now we in the first part of the show, Folks,
we talked a little bit about some of the for
the people at the very top of the list who
you would be familiar with, some of the new crew
that are coming through, some of them in gaming, in gambling,
some of them in much more conventional businesses, quite boring
businesses like data centers which you can make a fortune
from too. And we mentioned in passing the Gans family.
(16:38):
Now there's a couple of families. This is Chemists Warehouse, Folks,
which is the big float of the year, and everyone
knows Chemist Square House, and suddenly I see dotted through
the list John the people who were involved with it.
Tell us a little bit about who's behind Chemist Square
House and how they all arrive on the rich list
this year.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
There's actually six people from Chemists wa the two fifty.
How do you believe, James, So do two families, the
Gance family and the Verrocki family. So it starts with
jacket Sam Gance back in the gritty Melbourne suburb of
Reservoir back in the seventies and early eighties. And the
guy comes along who's got a chemist a degree called
(17:18):
Mario Varocki, and he wants a job and they hire
him as their sort of I guess apprentice.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Right, So he's the qualified chemist and they're the two
entrepreneur brothers, okay, and they're Polish originally.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I know they're the European originally. They also quite entrepreneurial, right,
they start buying chemist stuff, but they also had the
Laspecs and Latane brands back in the eighties as well
in nineties, which are fantastic sun cream and sunglasses brands.
So they do that, and then in about two thousands
they start what we know now today is the chemist
where House business. Right now, it's been very private. I
(17:49):
mean Jack has told me personally he hates the rich list.
Mario very good, he's always very nice about it, emails
me back at no comment, and I don't want to
talk about it. It'd be great if I'm not on
the lid. But so they've been on the list for
a while a few years now. But then Chemist's Warehouse
wants to go public Mother Wealth, right, so they engineer
(18:11):
this effectively a reverse takeover of the already listed Sigma Healthcare.
Now as a result of that, something like eighty or
ninety percent of the private Chemist Warehouse shareholders now become
Sigma shareholders, including several members of their family, one of
them being Damien Gants, who's the chief commercial officer, who's
Sam Ganser's son. He's a billionaire in our list this
(18:32):
year now thanks to his Sigma shares.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
And thanks to this process back which they turned the
private company into a publicly listed company, through what they
used to call it a reverse takeover of the Sigma Group,
which is listed on the Start market, you were able
to see how much everyone had.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yes, right, yes, thanks to this scheme of arrangement booklets, James,
I mean, I don't know who else looks through those,
but that's what I do. So several other members of
the Verrocki family as well, Marcello and Adrian brothers. They've
roughly at nine hundred million dollars or so stock each.
There's several other executives and family members who just missed
the list, two that are worth four five hundred million,
(19:10):
two hundred three hundred million on paper.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
What does it take to get on the list.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
It takes through six hundred and thirty five million now
this year. It's a very high cutoff.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Oh my god, six hundred and five minutes to get
on folks. So don't feel if you know someone terribly
wealthy and you say they'll be on the list and
they're not, well, they might be a both only five
hundred million. Keep that in mind. That's the Gants and
Baroki family who were behind Chemist Warehouse, and that's a
great story. I presumed the chemist skills and everything else
did not like them, did not like their sort of
(19:42):
commoditization of chemist shops. How do they get it through
the system?
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Ye, there's been a lot of regulatory sort of battles
over the years, and they've really just sort of almost
punched through all those and just kept sort of persevering
and kept growing almost in despite what the sort of
protective nature of the chemist business or the chemist industry
has done. I mean, effectively, if you walk into a
chemists warehouse, it's a big retail sort of outlet, isn't
It's a big shop with a chemist at the chemist
(20:07):
at the back. So that's really what it is. Stack
them high and sell them low and all that sort
of ratel success story.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
It's amazing. There's one in every I mean, it seems
to me there's one in every suburban strip in Australia and.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
There's plenty of growth throughout Iver says, and still in Australia.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
And as you say, when I saw that history of
getting through all hurdles, when I saw all the debate
about whether they'd ever get their reverse takeover up and
whether Stigma will get through and whether they get the
deal done, I remember thinking, these guys have gone. These
guys have gone from a shop in the suburb of
Melbourne to a multi billion dollar chain. They are not
(20:42):
going to be stopped by any regulatory hurdle at the
last lap when they go to cash out their fortunes
as they are entitled to by going on the stock market. Okay,
that's the Kansas and they are suddenly a cohort of
their own. The two families behind the Chemists warehouse on
this year's list, and they've arrived. You've found some other people.
There's a guy called Michael daldy or In. He appears
(21:07):
out of the blue with a bullets at number thirteen
at an estimate of thirteen point five billion billion dollars.
Never heard of him? Who on earth is he? And
how does he squeeze in between Frank Lloyd and Carry
Stokes And we've never heard of him.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
This is an incredible story. I mean, Mike is an
uzzie guy on Wall Street and he has got a
business called stone Peak and invests in infrastructure around the world.
It's almost like a mini mcquarie model.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
So hecquary and he went to the US.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
He exactly took that model over to the US. Worked
with mcquarie in the US for a while. It's a
great story about how it wasn't. He claims he didn't
do very well at UNI, but he managed to talk
his way in too Mcquarie as a cadet by going
along to their sort of drinks networking session spends. If
he is there doing really well, goes over to America
with them with taking that mcquarie sort of buying toll
roads and poles and wires and all this sort of
(21:57):
infrastructure assets and wrapping them up and someone management fees
all that sort of thing. It goes out on his
own with a business partner. The global financial crisis hit,
so they don't really have much business for a couple
of years. Decided that they had a big backer. Then
they pretty much didn't really know what to do other
than keep working away. They had this crucial moment where
they end up in Olympia in Washington State sort of
(22:19):
talking to the local state pension fund about investing a
couple hundred million dollars into their business. They managed to
get the money and away they go. And it's built
very quietly. We wouldn't even know about it.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
And is it green energy or all energy?
Speaker 2 (22:31):
All sorts of energy, all sorts of ports and different
infrastructure sort of assets. Now, I mean they've even owned
New Zealand age care homes, you know, this sort of
what I guess what they think is pretty steady income
sort of, and they have about seven seventy odd billion
dollars US in assets under management or under administration. The
(22:54):
business is actually worth. It got a US sort of
fifteen billion dollar valuation when a private equ he fund
bought into it last year. That's where you got That's
where I got the numbers from. Before then, we didn't
know about Mike. But the really interesting thing about Mark
is that he also we got a bit of publicity
about him last year when he bought her just a
small one hundred and fifty million dollar mansion in Palm Beach,
(23:14):
just just around the corner from Mary Lago James, which
I've actually seen is very nice.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
All right, right, all right, interesting story, Michael Dorral. That
is interesting to you talking about how he talked his
way into mcquarie. I remember was upon a time Quarry
famously has this very difficult entry tests McCrary bank, that is, folks,
and you have to pass all these tests like iq EQ,
rose arch tests, my briggs, my briggs, et cetera. And
(23:41):
I was working with someone on the commercial side who
was ex McQuary bank, and we were hiring someone and
he wanted to give them these tests. And I been
coming up through media, had no experience whatsoever of this
end of things. And I can tell you that we
still don't have anything like that when you're recruited media
at any level. But interestingly, we did the test and
(24:04):
someone I liked did badly on the tests, and this
ex maccori guy said, don't go against the tests. Every
time I went against the test, it blew up, and
we didn't. And apparently that is a thing. They're very strong,
and how you get into an investment bank is you
have to climb over quite a lot of hurdles, including
those tests. So it's really interesting about our friend Michael Daryl.
(24:26):
I wondered did he really get in sort of a
side door of from Maccarier or did he not? That
could be something for you to find out for next year. Okay,
now also new entrance. This just I find this completely entertaining.
There's a chap who has managed to be a debutante
on the list and he's ninety years old. Tell us
(24:47):
about him.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yes, Andreas Andreanopolis, who's a Greek margareant, lives in Melbourne.
He has built up these big network of petrol stations
for decades.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
But they're not under his name.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Well, they're under a business A Holdings, which just sounds
so vanilla. It doesn't no idea what it was, but
it just happened to pop up on one of this
hot highest taxpayers lists that the ATO puts out, and
I wonder what is this company? And due to recent
changes by the federal government the last couple of years,
a lot of these private companies have started having to
(25:18):
lodge their financial orts with set.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
They are finally doing it, and they finally do it.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
So A Holdings puts one up and all of a
sudden it's like wow, there's hundreds of millions of dollars
in this business from this pretty humble guy and if
he gets a bit of attention in the local Greek media,
very big philanthropy and just this business that just just
kept working away. Again another classic migrant success story, I think, Jane,
but very quietly done his thing.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Isn't that fantastic? What a great story you've dug up there,
You've excavated from the Assic files. And of course again
I was a little bit cynical that they would ever
get anything out of private companies, because that's why people
keep them private. So Nick Andrianachus and family one point
billion in there at number eighty eight and very much
an unknown quantity until today. Okay, well take short break.
(26:07):
We'll be back in a moment with some questions. Hello,
Welcome back to The Australian's Money Puzzle podcast. I'm James
Kirby and I'm talking to John Stencil and we are
talking about the ever interesting Rich to fifty list. Interesting
(26:28):
from a money point of view. From an investment point
of view, some people love to back people in their investments.
You have these founder led funds where people just say
I trust the person rather than the company, and they
get behind them, and some of those companies go a
long way. You look at the top of the list,
I mean wise check us up there for instance, which
is very much attached to one person, Richard White, who,
by George isn't going to give up that company easy,
(26:50):
that's for sure. But I was wondering with you, John,
when you're looking at this, I'm just wondering whether I
read about as a guy to follow. It was a
very interesting man. He died a few years ago. His
name was Felix Dennis, fascinating guy. Australians might remember. Australians
are interested in nineteen sixties culture, might remember there was
(27:13):
a famous magazine called oz oh Z and there was
all these extraordinary people linked with it, and they had
a famous trial in the UK way back. A lot
of famous Australians came out of that trial. But the
person behind the publisher of oz was a man called
Pheenix Tennis, and he later, as a multi millionaire, wrote
(27:33):
a book called How to Get Rich. But it's actually
a very sad book, almost about how he was a
cocaine addict. He was never happy. He had a fortune
of one hundred million or so and a long tail
of misery laced with a lot of money. And I
just wonder John about what these people have in common,
whether they are what are their common qualities. I know
(27:58):
it's really hard to answer that this, but that's a
bit more about them as a corehurt Well.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
I guess there's that notions of perseverance and high energy
and coming back from stepbacks and all that sort of
thing that you know, being smart and with their timing
and highly intelligent. I think that's the richest to fifty list, James,
but it's not necessarily the happy two fifty year old.
I mean that there's a lot of trials and tribulations
that come with being wealthy. I'm not saying we need
to feel sorry for them, but you can just think.
I just know that when I write about them for
(28:23):
the rest of the year, so to speak. In my
normal job, there's a lot of increasing amount of court
cases and disputes that we cover in terms of who's
going to get the money or why hasn't this person
got that? So that's the I think that's the coming
tide of how do you deal with having a big
amount of wealth, How do you deal with your kids?
Speaker 1 (28:41):
How do your kids deal with it?
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Exactly right?
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Do you think angst is more common in the second generation.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
I think it is. I mean, there's been some very
high profile issues with mental health concerns. James Packerson is
the Springs to America.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
And we mentioned the Rhinehart family who've been in and
out of court, mentioned the Pratt who I've have been
in court. That is in the Pratt side and well
in the Hancock's side, Gina Hinhardt side. There's long running
core cases. Yeah. So, and then the other thing is like,
even if they have their act together, even if they
(29:15):
are well balanced, well adjusted people, other people treat them differently.
They can't be treated normally, can they.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
No, it's a verified error, I suppose. So there's a
cohort of people around these people that I guess say
yes to them a lot. Probably, you know, that's what
they've got to, that position of power and wealth. You
see that relationship that people have with politicians, that sort
of courting power in that way or having the power
caught them in a political sense. So there is that
notion that they are above everyone else in a whole
(29:47):
bunch of ways rather than just the money side.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Yeah, everyone probably wants something from them. There's some people
would be familiar with that across time. But as you said,
we have these next generations coming through. The most obvious
ones been Prass, Packer, the Lowis, et cetera. These are
old families that have been on the list for a
long time, but as you say, it's not necessarily the
happy list, So pro rata, I suppose more of them
(30:11):
end up in court with their siblings than perhaps the
average sample on the street. Okay, because the nature of
your arrival on the show, John, it being so special,
I have curated some very special questions for you, just
one or two, but I wanted to put this to
you and folks. One thing I haven't sort of mentioned
(30:32):
on the show before is when the questions come in,
of course from you all, which are great, and they
come in every day to the money puzzle at the
Australian dot Com dot you also I get a torrent
of unwanted people request to come on the show, asking
to come on some one in ten maybe I would
even think about. But a lot of them I don't
want to even talk about or talk to. And I
(30:55):
thought i'd asked John, I'm just going to read out John,
this is something that's typical thing that came in during
the week. I'm going to scrub out the person's name.
It's this piece of correspondent says mister X was in
debt after the tenants trashed the investment property, but rather
than letting it ruin him, it changed his life. In
just four years, this Brisbane based investor flipped twenty seven properties,
(31:20):
built a four million portfolio, made two million in profit
and launched I love this last bit, a half a
million a month coaching business. And now he's on a
mission to teach us all how to build wealth. Now,
the reason I bring this up is I don't know
this person. I don't want to know this person. There's
(31:40):
piles of them out there, but a lot of our
listeners and a lot of everyday Australians that's the rich list.
They see it. They admire those people. These people arrive
in front of them and they promise rich riches made
fast and easy.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
The sacreds of making your success. I'm not sure whether
that five hundred a month is his income from the
coaching or that's what he's charging. So either way, it's
pretty outrageous if you were to call it that. Yeah,
you're right. There's the notions of seminars to how to
build your property wealth and that sort of thing that
cropped up and never ran. There's a lot of this
(32:15):
stuff and I feel that that look firstly, you know,
you really have to get qualified advice on a whole
bunch of things.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
But what only have the people on this list ever
go and listen to a coach talking about flipping properties
and how much they've made from coaching themselves, from coaching
others to make money. I mean, would only have the
people on to anything.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Like this, No, not in a million years, but their
kids go with their next generation. No, I think, I
think you've got to weed out. I mean that would
be just very skeptical about this sort of thing. There's
a lot of hangers on. There's a lot of people
trying to sort of learn about these things that I
think the best thing really you've got to take advice
in the mainstream. You could probably learn just as much
from reading the Riches to fifty and pulling out the
key lessons from what the successful people have done. And
(32:55):
there's always quite a few perennial things overcoming setbacks and
forcing the moments that you don't necessarily need to fork
out tens of thousands of dollars for But I think
even if you want to invest in something like this,
there's funds these days that invest in found all led companies.
Even that's some sort of a proxy for taking on
the advice or the acumen of founders or wealthy people.
(33:17):
So there's other avenues of doing it. But this notion
that wealth can be taught in this way is I
think it's a pretty false one.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Okay, I thought i'd put that question out there listeners.
I don't normally as I say, but I thought this
was the time to do it, because when we do
a show like this, to some extent, you have to
be careful. You don't necessarily want it. Well, you're championing
people on the rich list, but it's their business and
investment acumen, not necessarily we don't always know what they're
actually like. Just one that's saying, Luke asks, I was
(33:48):
wondering if we could have a deep dive into shares
versus property. I feel the main reason people believe property
outperforms is the leverage. Also the bank's willingness to provide
credit for property over shares. Yeah, you're onto something there, Luke,
Property versus shares, And then it's something that we could
talk We have a show about it every other month,
(34:10):
but we should have one about it because it comes
up all the time. And the first part I want
to make you is that this thing about that properly
because it's leverage, is something misleading. You can get leverage
on shares. You can negatively gear shares just as much
as easily as you can negatively gear property. In fact,
it would be considerably easier and less taxing in many ways.
But we will talk about that on Tuesday show, The
(34:32):
Budget Day Show with Anthony Keane coming up, and of
course we'll have the budget next week, which is March
twenty five. I have never recalled a budget where there
was so little in the way of leaks or information
or anticipation, probably because they say the government didn't want
to have it, but they're going to have it. And
(34:53):
I will be on with Will Hamilton and we will
do our annual budget show, and don't you worry, we
will find plenty to talk about until then. Thank you,
Thank you John stand Soult from The Rich two fifty.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Thank you James.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Great to have you in the studio today, and thank
you for listening.
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