花旗集团预测的数据显示，澳洲首富“富婆”吉娜•莱恩哈特有望取代身家460亿美元的墨西哥大亨卡洛斯•斯利姆成为全球首富。据悉，现年57岁的吉娜•莱恩哈特很低调，很少出现在公众视野中。她20年前从父亲手中继承了负债累累的矿业集团，不过在过去这些年，随着铁矿石产品的热销，她拥有的财富总额也不断累加。据澳大利亚一家商业网站预测，莱恩哈特公司目前的市值约为300亿美元，不过随着三个矿业开采项目的展开，她每年的收入将达到100亿美元。由于该公司全权归莱恩哈特所有，没有股东参股，所以全部收入都将归入她的个人净资产，其总额有望超过1000亿美元。
Gina Rinehart, an Australian woman who inherited a debt-ridden mining company from her fa
ther 20 years ago is set to become the world's richest person.
Gina Rinehart, 57, is the richest person in Australia and predicted to become the wealthiest in the world.
Her fortune has more than doubled to A$10.3 billion (£6.8 billion) in the past year because of a commodities boom.
She is on course to overtake Carlos Slim, the Mexican magnate worth £46 billion, and the Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who is worth £35 billion, Citigroup has estimated.
The financial group calculates that three coal and iron ore projects she is developing will lead her to overtake the men mainly because she owns her companies outright and has no shareholders.
“If Rinehart was a company listed on the [Australia Stock Exchange] and valued using the same 11-times price-to-earnings ratio as her
partner, Rio Tinto, she would be worth US$30 billion (£19 billion), putting her in the top ten of the Forbes rich list, said SmartCompany, an Australian business website.
“It is possible to see Rinehart’s portfolio of coal and iron ore production spinning off annual profits approaching US$10 billion,” giving her a “personal net worth valuation of more than US$100 billion,” it added.
Ms Rinehart avoids publicity and is barely known outside of the business community. In 1952 her father, Lang Hancock, discovered the world’s largest iron ore deposit in Australia’s Pilbara region.
She married twice. Her second husband was Frank Rinehart, an American lawyer, who died in 1990.
The world's wealthiest woman is Christy Walton, the widow of John Walton, the Wal-Mart heir, who is worth $26.5bn.
