Its been a tough few years for Lakes Oil (ASX:LKO) with a falling share price and a moratorium on gas exploration in Victoria. Australia’s richest woman, Gina Rinehart, has revealed that this year she’s sold $280,000 of her stake in the company.

According to Bloomberg she has been a shareholder for nearly six years and lost about 72 per cent.

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Lakes Oil is appealing against the court ruling that favoured the Victorian government, and in any event the ban will expire mid-2020.

But Rinehart has been gradually reducing her stake since March from 9.84 per cent to 8.83 per cent – although only had to disclose it yesterday evening since her stake has changed by over 1 per cent.

She is still the second largest shareholder behind Darkhorse Resources (ASX:DHR), which owns 30 per cent.

However, Rinehart’s other small cap investment, Jupiter Mines (ASX:JMS), also suffered a share price plunge from 40c to 23c since its listing in April 2018. Though it has recovered somewhat this year, to 34c. She owns only 1 per cent of that company.

She also previously had a stake in oil play Sun Resources (ASX:SUR) but according to Bloomberg sold out this year.

In other ASX small cap corporate news today:

Its been a tough environment for retailers but Michael Hill (ASX:MHJ) is one bucking the trend. The final quarter same store sales result was up by 0.1 per cent, totalling $123.2m. While sales are down 3.5 per cent on a full year basis, they have gradually recovered across the financial year. CEO Daniel Bracken welcomed the result and that it occurred in spite of the retail environment. He said Michael Hill was “well positioned” for the months ahead.

Troy Resources (ASX:TRY) shareholders are not happy that the share price has fallen over 40 per cent in 12 months. Now they’re acting on it – shareholder RAMcap is trying to remove John Jones as a director and cut directors’ pay by 75 per cent. While the board argued the request to remove Jones was invalid, a meeting will be held because the remuneration motion was deemed valid.