Another Rich List - ShareCafe

Yawn, another Rich List from BRW magazine.

Instead of the regular Rich List, this is a variation: the list of Australia’s Top 200 executives.

Why do this list?

We already have the Rich List, the Rich Lists for entertainers and sports people, the Young Rich List (ABC’ Learning’s Eddie Groves was a start on that one).

The Rich Executives List has now been running for three years. It leaves us none the wiser about the worth of CEOs and other executives on the list to their companies.

BRW’s sales have slumped just as the stock market has fallen. BRW’s sales each week are down from 45,000 in the June half year at just over 45,000, to 41,000 in the quarter ended December last year.

That’s not as dramatic a fall as the market, but BRW used to sell over 50,000 copies a week on average a few years ago.

So now we have to endure the country’s richest employees (Source, BRW).

According to BRW Rupert Murdoch regained top spot in the annual list of Australia’s top 200 executives.

He certainly was the highest paid near Australian executive with around $US24 million. That’s over $A36 million at current exchange rates.

BRW claimed in its report that Mr Murdoch was first with $3.38 billion, compared with $7.9 billion last year. That’s only because he calls himself executive chairman and he and his family control around 30% of News Corp’s shares.

Just on the more than 50% drop in the value of his holding means News Corp shareholders have felt the same impact from the market. That means there’s no much value in Mr Murdoch’s stewardship.

Mr Packer is there because of the 38% of Crown and 38% of Consolidated Media Holdings held by his private company. He is executive chairman of Crown and Deputy chairman of CMH.

Andrew Forrest, last year’s winner and chief executive of Fortescue Metals Group, came second as his share holding was down 71% to $2.37 billion from $8.4 billion.

Frank Lowy, founder and chairman of Westfield Group, rose to third with $1.83 billion, pushing Crown executive chairman James Packer into fourth with $1.54 billion.

BRW said the total share value of the list, made up of the 200 wealthiest executives drawn from Australia’s top 500 public companies, fell 54% to $20.3 billion from $44 billion in 2008.

That’s a greater fall than the drop in the broader market.

BRW said the All Ordinaries index fell 42% in the 12 months to the end of February this year.

13 executives managed to increase their wealth over the year, including Linc Energy managing director Peter Bond, who was 11th on this year’s list. That’s only because of the lingering deal to sell some of the company’s Queensland coal assets to Chinese buyers.

The futility of such a measure was illustrated by Babcock & Brown chief executive Phil Green and eight of his colleagues who were in last year’s list didn’t make the cut this time. Their company went broke, taking billions of dollars of stockmarket value with them.

Nine members of last year’s list were Babcock executives, with Mr Green at 29th with a shareholding of $173 million and founder Jim Babcock at 20th with $263 million. .

Reece Australia chief executive Alan Wilson was fifth on this year’s list with $1.05 billion, running a company with a market capitalisation of $1.6 billion, or 97th among companies in the All Ords.

He is one of the ‘quiet ‘executives in the country. You see and read very little about him and his family.

Unlike Harvey Norman chairman and co-founder Gerry Harvey who was seventh on the list with $723.7 million, running a company with a market value of $2.8 billion.

Westfield, with a market value of $23.39 billion, is the only stock exchange top 20 company with an executive in the BRW Executive Rich top 10.