Gina Rinehart grabs stake in coal company as James Packer spends up

Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, has added to her growing stock portfolio by building a stake in listed coal explorer Carabella Resources.

The company, which holds coal tenements in Queensland’s coal fields, revealed to the market that a subsidiary of Rinehart’s company Hancock Prospecting called Timeview Enterprises had spent about $1.8 million to grab a 0.74% stake in Carabella.

While substantial investors in a company do not have to reveal their holdings until they amass a 5% stake, Carabella itself decided to announce Hancock’s investment to the market.

“Carabella considers this information should be released to keep the market fully informed, particularly in view of ongoing consolidation in the coal sector,” the company said.

“To date, Carabella has not been contacted by either Timeview Enterprises or Hancock Prospecting in regard to the acquisition of shares, and Carabella is not aware of the intentions of either.”

Carabella might not know its new investors’ intentions, but investors appear to be hoping Rinehart could be looking to do a larger deal with the company – the share price jumped 5.5% yesterday to $2.10.

Rinehart seems intent on spreading some of the wealth created by her mining empire into different businesses.

The iron ore magnate, whose fortune is put at $10.3 billion, has emerged as a sharemarket player in the last 12 months after largely steering clear of the market for most of her career.

She now owns stakes in media companies Ten Network and Fairfax Media and mining company Mineral Resources.

Last year Rinehart even invested in a musical adaption of the movie Xanadu, although the show was a disaster and the company behind it was later put into administration.

Another famous name in Australian wealth, James Packer, is also spending up, buying $50 million worth of shares in his casino company Crown Limited.

The purchases take his stake from 43.25% to 43.8% and comes about 10 months after Packer spent $210 million to grab another 3% of Crown.

While there has been much speculation in recent years that Packer could try to take Crown private, the price tag – the 56% of the company he doesn’t own would likely cost at least $4 billion – makes such a move unlikely.