Lang Walker, founder and former executive chairman of Walker Corp.
Noted property developer Lang Walker, who built a swathe of landmark developments across Australia, passed away peacefully at his home in Sydney on Saturday evening at the age of 78. He was ranked 18th on the Forbes list of Australia’s 50 Richest in 2023 with a net worth of US$2.7 billion.
In a statement, the Walker family said, “Lang loved creating incredible places where people can live and work, but he loved his family more than anything else in the world and his generosity and affection had no boundaries.”
Lang’s privately held Walker Corp. has a $9 billion property portfolio, which as per a media statement by the company, “will continue to be managed, curated and added to by the executive team for the long term.”
Lang set up the company as A&L Walker in 1964, with his father Alec, as an earth moving, quarrying and excavation business. They got into property development three years later and renamed the company in 1973. Expansion continued apace in the 1980s before the company got listed in 1993.
Walker sold the bulk of the company twice, first in 1999 and again in 2006 to Mirvac, before rebuilding it. In the process, he cemented his reputation as the name behind landmark urban transformation projects from Sydney’s King Street Wharf to Melbourne’s Collin Square. Lang Walker joined the ranks of Australia’s richest in 2008 and debuted on the Forbes’ World Billionaires ranking in 2014.
In 2011, he bought a 140-acre private island in Fiji and spent millions converting it into a luxury resort. Branding it Kokomo, the pseudonym of a composer whose music he played as a child, the island opened to visitors in 2017. Walker owned a fleet of yachts, all called Kokomo; it's the name he used for every boat he's owned but one. A keen diver, Walker was also a notable philanthropist through his Walker Family Foundation.
Lang Walker is survived by wife Sue, children Blake, Chad, Georgia and their spouses, and his 10 grandchildren.
