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SCMP Reporter

TELEVISION and magazine magnate Kerry Packer has vastly increased his wealth to retain the mantle of Australia's richest person, according to an annual magazine survey of Australia's wealthy.

  Business Review Weekly said Mr Packer's minimum net worth increased from A$3 billion (about HK$16.8 billion) to $5.5 billion in the year to April 1994.

  ''At the pinnacle of Packers' empire stands his privately owned Consolidated Press Holdings,'' said the magazine, adding that corporate filings showed the net cash flow of the company rose by nearly 50 per cent to $720 million in the year to April 1993.

  ''Packer's wealth is now spread across the media, gambling, telecommunications, chemical and pastoral industries,'' the magazine said.

  Mr Packer recently failed in a bid for the licence to develop Sydney's first casino but he is a large stakeholder in a Melbourne casino development.

  The media overtook property as the biggest total source of wealth for Australia's richest 200 people, with the number of media-based fortunes increasing from 13 to 18 and their total value soaring from $4.2 billion to $7.2 billion in the year to April 1994.

  The family fortune of Mr Packer's fellow Australian-born media baron, Rupert Murdoch, rose by $1 billion as News Corp's share price rose, to equal Mr Packer's wealth at $5.5 billion, the magazine said.

  Because Mr Murdoch was an American citizen resident in the United States, he did not qualify for the list, the magazine said. But the News Corp fortune is held through family trusts with his mother and sisters.

  Mr Packer and the Murdoch family were two of 90 individuals or families on the 200-richest-list who inherited wealth.

  Under the headline of ''Boom Times for the Wealthy'', the magazine said Australia's richest 200 individuals and families increased their wealth by a third in the year to April 1994 to almost $37 billion.

  ''The profits of their enterprises have soared and the share market . . . has rewarded them accordingly,'' it said.

   ''There has not been such an increase in wealth since the share boom of 1986 and 1987. Unlike those heady days, fortunes are not being conjured out of debt.''   To make the list people needed to have at least $37 million, $7 million more than in 1993.



Packer still Australia's wealthiest at A$5.5b