Ms Rinehart fortune to soar on POSCO deal

Thursday, 26 Jan 2012

Australia's richest person, iron ore magnate Ms Gina Rinehart could see her fortune nearly double to AUD 20 billion after South Korean steel giant POSCO moved to increase its stake in the Roy Hill iron ore project.

POSCO last week announced it would pay KRW 1.8 trillion (AUD 1.5 billion) to raise its interest in the project to 15% by mid 2014.

POSCO the world's third-largest steelmaker, already owns 3.75% of Roy Hill. The deal places an estimated value of AUD 10 billion on the project in Western Australia's Pilbara region.

Roy Hill is a joint venture between Ms Rinehart's company Hancock Prospecting and Posco, which says it is still in talks to finalise the purchase.

POSCO announced its intention to acquire 15% of Roy Hill in 2010 but did not reveal the value of the deal until last week.

(Sourced from ABC/Reuters)

Ms Rinehart get nod for coal railway project in central Queensland

Saturday, 12 Nov 2011

Mining billionaire Ms Gina Rinehart has retained the right to build a controversial coal rail corridor in central Queensland, after the state government successfully quashed a Supreme Court challenge led by QCoal.

Rinehart’s Hancock Coal won approval from the Bligh government late last year to build a AUD 2.2 billion railway from its Alpha Coal Mine in the Galilee Basin, about 360 kilometres southwest of Mackay, to the Abbot Point coal port near Bowen.

The state government declared the Alpha Coal Rail Corridor Project as an infrastructure facility of significance because it would increase the state’s overall coal production by 35% and provide employment and business opportunities.

The state also stands to gain an additional AUD 430 million in royalties each year through the project, with Australia’s annual export revenue set to receive a AUD 1 billion boost.

The declaration meant land necessary for the project could be compulsorily acquired by the state, and then leased back to Hancock Coal on a long-term basis.

However, the corridor traverses land owned by around 40 different interest holders, including at least five other mining companies.

Five companies that hold tenements or mining leases in the area challenged the legality of the government’s approval in an application to the Supreme Court lead by QCoal against Queensland Infrastructure Minister Stirling Hinchliffe, who, with the state’s Coordinator General, was responsible for the significant project declaration.

They argued in court before Justice Martin Daubney in March that the proposed railway could not possibly be deemed significant because it terminated about 20 kilometres west of the port facility at Abbot Point.

The project hit a major hurdle in September last year, when the Supreme Court repealed the state government’s significant declaration on the grounds it was mishandled.

As a result, Hancock Coal was forced to realign the rail corridor completely outside the Bowen Basin in order to gain approval again, although this raised the opportunity for other coal companies to object.

(sourced Brisbanetimes)

Rinehart told to share iron ore deposit

March 23, 2011, 5:13 am
By Kate Emery, The West Australian

Australia's richest woman Gina Rinehart faces the prospect of having to hand over a 25 per cent stake in the Rhodes Ridge iron ore deposit within a month of her appeals over a 10-year legal battle being officially exhausted.

A year after the Supreme Court ruled that the children of Lang Hancock's late business partner Peter Wright were entitled to wrest the stake from Ms Rinehart - Mr Hancock's daughter - the court's final orders were delivered yesterday.

Although the outcome of the appeals process is not yet known, if Ms Rinehart is unsuccessful she will have 28 days to transfer the stake.

Ms Rinehart is expected to take the fight to the High Court if she is unsuccessful in the Court of Appeal.

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Iron in the blood, Rinehart tops rich list Erik Jensen

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February 4, 2011

It is almost 20 years since the mining magnate Lang Hancock died. Today his daughter, Gina Rinehart, is officially Australia's richest person and the first woman to hold the position.
While James Packer has diminished his father's fortune, she has far eclipsed hers.
The list of the top-20 richest Australians

The Chinese helped, with their appetite for iron ore. The collapse of James Packer's fortune - though still worth $4.4 billion, and ranked third behind Andrew ''Twiggy'' Forrest - did not hurt either.
But nothing can detract from the fact Mrs Rinehart more than trebled her worth in a year. The US magazine Forbes estimates her fortune at $US9 billion. As much as Silvio Berlusconi's, who ranked a louche 74 on last year's list of world billionaires.

The University of Sydney economics student - once divorced, once widowed - made almost $700 million in revenue from the first year of her joint venture with Rio Tinto in the Pilbara. In the 2008-09 financial year, Hancock Prospecting made a record $225 million profit - equal, almost, to her father's entire fortune when he died, even after adjustments for inflation.
Recently she has made headlines for her raids on media companies - including on Fairfax Media, publisher of the Herald. More quiet has been the offensive she has lately begun on her father's legacy.

Most of his iron ore holdings were lost or sold before she took over, her company says. Royalties from his deal with Rio Tinto went on debts and the deposit now making so much money was then a ''few drill holes'' - the man, when he died, was bankrupt, the company says.
''When Mrs Rinehart became chairman it was very difficult to do the investment and work required with substantial debts and liabilities to pay and even the office building mortgaged,'' Hancock Prospecting said in a recent statement. ''There was no 'inherited money' to fund Hope Downs [deposit]; significant moneys had to be borrowed to do so.''
The dispute bubbled over into a open letter late last year, directed at the journalist Tim Treadgold's suggestion she was riding the ''same flatbed truck'' her father drove.
''Silly attacks on people to divert attention from the real world issues,'' she wrote, ''won't help Australia.''
The net worth of Australia's richest 40 people rose by 40 per cent in the past year, to a combined wealth of $68.4 billion.(sourced:www.smh.com.au)