Founders & self-made
The operators who built empires from nothing.
- ArticleAlan Bond: the sign-writer who conquered the world, then lost everything
From Perth sign-writing to the America's Cup, Channel Nine and a Van Gogh — and then to prison. The full arc of Alan Bond's extraordinary rise and collapse.
- ArticleAndrew Forrest: how a third force rewrote the Pilbara
Andrew Forrest built Fortescue Metals from a shell company into one of the world's largest iron ore exporters. The story is wilder than the hagiography suggests.
- ArticleChristopher Skase and Qintex: the empire that dissolved in the sun
How Christopher Skase built a media and resorts empire on borrowed confidence, then spent his final years fighting extradition from a Majorcan villa.
- ArticleDick Smith: the electronics man who kept reinventing himself
Before the retail chain that bears his name collapsed under other owners, Dick Smith built three separate ventures on cheek, timing and a genius for publicity.
- ArticleFrank Lowy and Westfield: the refugee who remade the shopping centre
From a deli in Blacktown to a global empire, Frank Lowy's Westfield story is one of the most remarkable in Australian business history. Here's how it was built — and sold.
- ArticleGerry Harvey: the salesman who turned retail into a property empire
From Norman Ross to Harvey Norman, Gerry Harvey built one of Australia's most recognisable retail chains — and a commercial property portfolio to match. The story behind the franchise model, the controversies and the founder who never learned to stay quiet.
- ArticleLindsay Fox: the truckie who built a logistics empire
Lindsay Fox left school at fifteen with nothing but a secondhand truck and an appetite for hard work. What he built from that beginning is a lesson in what sustained private ownership can actually look like.
- ArticleNathan Tinkler: the electrician who rode coal to a billion dollars and back to nothing
How a Hunter Valley sparky turned a single leveraged coal deal into Australia's largest personal fortune — and then lost it all inside a decade.
- ArticleRichard Pratt: the migrant's son who built Visy and a very large shadow
How Richard Pratt turned a small cardboard box plant into Visy, a global packaging empire, and why the cartel case still colours his legacy.
- ArticleSolomon Lew: the rag trader who fought Coles Myer to a standstill
Solomon Lew built Premier Investments from Melbourne's garment trade and spent decades in the Coles Myer boardroom wars. Here's the record, plainly told.