THE RICHEST MINER

 Hello ladies and gents this is the Viking telling you that today we are talking about

GEORGINA HOPE RINEHART

Georgina Hope "Gina" Rinehart (née Hancock, born 9 February 1954) is an Australian mining magnate and heiress. Rinehart is the Executive Chairman of Hancock Prospecting, a privately-owned mineral exploration and extraction company founded by her father, Lang Hancock.

Rinehart was born in Perth, Western Australia, and spent her early years in the Pilbara. She boarded at St Hilda's Anglican School for Girls and then briefly studied at the University of Sydney, dropping out to work with her father at Hancock Prospecting. 

She was Lang Hancock's only child, and when he died in 1992 – leaving a bankrupt estate – she succeeded him as executive chairman. She turned a company with severe financial difficulties into the largest private company in Australia and one of the largest private mining houses in the world.

When Rinehart took over Hancock Prospecting, its total wealth was estimated at A$75 million, which did not account for groups liabilities and contingent liabilities. 

She oversaw an expansion of the company over the following decade, and due to the iron ore boom of the early 2000s became a nominal billionaire in 2006. In the 2010s, Rinehart began to expand her holdings into areas outside the mining industry. She made sizeable investments in Ten Network Holdings and Fairfax Media (although she sold her interest in the latter in 2015), and also expanded into agriculture, buying several cattle stations.

Rinehart is one of Australia's richest people; with Forbes estimating her net worth in 2019 at US$14.8 billion as published in the list of Australia's 50 richest people; and The Australian Financial Review estimating her net worth at A$28.89 billion as published in the 2020 Financial Review Rich List. As of September 2020 Forbes considered Rinehart one of the world's ten richest women. Rinehart was Australia's wealthiest person from 2011 to 2015, according to both Forbes and The Australian Financial Review; and again in 2020, according to The Australian Financial Review.

Her wealth peaked at around A$29 billion in 2012, at which point she overtook Christy Walton as the world's richest woman and was included on the Forbes list of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women. Rinehart's net worth dropped significantly over the following few years due to a slowdown in the Australian mining sector; rebuilt again during 2020 due to increased demand for Australian iron ore.

And as always have a chilled day from the Viking