James Thompson

And they argued that their grandfather, Lang, wanted to give them stakes in Hancock prospecting.

And Gina Reinhart basically prevented that from happening.

So you got these three battles all intertwined and intermeshed.

And as you said, after two and a half years of deliberation by Justice Jennifer Smith in those WrestleMania battles, because there were winners and losers here.

So in terms of who controls Hancock prospecting, who owns this big chunk of the Pilbara, there's no doubt about it.

Gina Reinhart emerges as the winner there.

The Wright family were unsuccessful in getting an equity stake in Hancock prospecting's minds.

And Gina Reinhart's kids were unsuccessful in proving up their claim that Lang Hancock actually wanted to give them a stake.

So Gina walks away from this battle as the big controller of these businesses.

But she did suffer two losses.

So Justice Smith did say that the Wright family and the Rhodes family are entitled to some royalties from some of Hancock prospecting's mines.

So this does mean that Hancock Prospecting will have to make some payments to these two families, and they're not insubstantial.

They will be shared with Rio Tinto, which is Hancock Prospecting's partner in the Pilbara, but I think it's really important to emphasise that these payments are retrospective as well.

So not only will Hancock Prospecting have to make royalty payments in the future, they're also going to have to go back and account for past payments as well.

Just quickly, what's a royalty, James, and how do they even fit in?

So royalty is a share of the profits that are generated by a mine.

Royalties can be streamed to lots of different parties.

So the big one in Australia is governments.

Governments take a royalty out of the tons that are mined of lots of different commodities, including iron ore.

You might pay a royalty to the various joint venture partners in a business.