Hancock letter reveals mining magnate sought to avoid heir dispute
Mining magnate Lang Hancock wrote to the family of his business partner Peter Wright prophetically stating he wanted a clean division of their partnership’s assets to avoid “grey areas for our respective heirs to argue about”.
Lawyers representing Hancock Prospecting on Tuesday aired more historic letters between the West Australian mining pioneers as they set out to defend a potential multibillion-dollar claim for royalties flowing from the company’s Hope Downs mine.
Peter Wright (left) and Lang Hancock in 1967.
The WA Supreme Court heard that Hancock was emphatically opposed to anything other than a “complete split” of the partnership’s assets, and spelled that out in correspondence to Peter Wright’s son in the late 1980s.
“Provided we can make a total cleanup package division of Hancock and Wright so as not to leave grey areas for our respective heirs to argue about,” Hancock wrote.
Some 40 years later, the descendants of both families are locked in a years-long legal dispute about their respective rights to the assets those men divided.
The Wright family are seeking an equal share of cash from Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting Hope Downs mining operation they say was developed on land that the “Hanwright” partnership developed, and is subject to a royalty payment.
The lawyer representing Hancock Prospecting, Noel Hutley, SC, told the court the Wright family initially believed they got the better end of the deal to split the Hanwright assets.
Hancock Prospecting chairwoman Gina Rinehart. Nelson Ching
“It was pretty clear that the Wrights thought they had got the better part of the deal,” he said, after referencing a letter from Lang Hancock to Peter Wright about the division of the partnership’s assets.
The letter
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