Background and career
John Andrew Henry Forrest (born 18 November 1961), nicknamed Twiggy, is an Australian businessman. He is best known as the founder and current executive chairman of mining company Fortescue, one of Australia's largest companies. He also serves as team principal of the Fortescue Zero Racing team. With an assessed net worth of A$33.29 billion according to the Financial Review Rich List 2023, Forrest was ranked as the second richest Australian. The Australian Financial Review named him the richest person in Australia in 2008. Forrest holds a Doctor of Philosophy (PHD) in Marine Ecology.
John Andrew Henry Forrest was born on 18 November 1961 in Perth, Western Australia, the youngest of three children of Judith (née Fry) and Donald Forrest. His father, grandfather (Mervyn), and great-grandfather (David) were all managers of Minderoo Station, which David had established in 1878 with his brothers, Alexander and John. John, Alexander, David, and Mervyn were all members of parliament for periods, with John serving as Western Australia's first premier. Forrest's early years were spent at Minderoo, located in the Pilbara region south of Onslow. Minderoo was owned by the Forrest family until it was sold in 1998 by his father. Forrest bought back the property in 2009. Forrest was educated at Onslow Primary School and through the School of the Air before moving to Perth to attend Christ Church Grammar School and then Hale School. He stuttered as a child, which is how he came to develop a relationship with Ian Black, whose Aboriginal father, Scotty, became Forrest's mentor. Forrest went on to the University of Western Australia where he majored in economics and politics.
After graduating, Forrest worked as a stockbroker at the brokerage houses Kirke Securities and Jacksons. He became the founding CEO of Anaconda Nickel in 1993, after buying a stake in the company. However, in 2001 he was ousted as CEO when the company almost collapsed. US bondholders received $0.26 for each dollar of debt in the restructuring. The company's shares fell by 89% before it was taken over by Glencore and renamed Minara Resources.
In April 2003, he took control of Allied Mining and Processing, which had rights to iron ore in the Pilbara, and renamed it Fortescue Metals Group (FMG). He remains a major shareholder of FMG, through his private company, The Metal Group. One of Forrest's initial mines in the Pilbara produced and shipped $50 billion worth in iron ore, without providing compensation or receiving permission from the Yindjibarndi people to carry out mining on their land. The operations in the area destroyed about 250 cultural and sacred sites. Fortescue made its first iron ore shipment to China in May 2008. Fortescue increased its capacity to 155 million tonnes per annum through a $9.2 billion expansion in 2014. Since then, the company has grown to possess three times the tenements of its nearest rival in Western Australia's iron ore rich Pilbara region. Fortescue holds major deposits at Mount Nicholas, Christmas Creek, Cloudbreak, and Tongolo. In 2007, he took an interest and a directorship in Niagara Mining Limited, renamed Poseidon Nickel Limited, which had in 2006 acquired from WMC the Windara nickel deposits near Laverton, Western Australia. Forrest described the Gillard government proposed Minerals Resource Rent Tax (MRRT) as "economic vandalism" and a "mad dog's breakfast" that would drive up foreign resource ownership. He stated he would challenge it in the High Court as being unconstitutional, as it discriminates against states, and fails to appropriately capture big producers BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto. WA premier Colin Barnett has stated the state government would back constitutional action, admitting the tax had been suggested to him as a "sovereign risk". He was highly critical of the government's expenditure of $38M on an advertising campaign, that was not approved using the usual processes, as it had to "counter mining industry 'spin' about the resources super profits tax". The former treasurer Wayne Swan said the big miners would pay at least A$2 billion tax, and wrote to the head of BDO Accounting, who modelled the claims Forrest used, noting they were "utterly unrealistic" and riddled with errors. Treasury concurred that they would be unable to release the assumptions underpinning its forecasts, as they were based on confidential information provided by the big miners. Gillard struck a deal with BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xstrata to develop the MRRT. Independent MP Andrew Wilkie requested the government take Forrest's mining tax grievance to heart. In August 2021, it was announced that Forrest would receive a $2.4 billion dividend on Fortescue's record profit.
Tattarang is the holding company for the Forrest family's private business interests. Tattarang invests in a diverse range of businesses across agri-food, energy, health technology, property, resources, and lifestyle. The group is made up of several business divisions: Fiveight, Harvest Road, Squadron Energy, Tenmile, Wyloo Metals, Z1Z, and Akubra.
Following SANZAAR's decision to reduce the number of Super Rugby teams for 2018, the Australian Rugby Union (now Rugby Australia) announced in August 2017 that Perth-based rugby team Western Force would be one of the teams cut from the 2018 competition. In the following month, Forrest announced that he would create a new tournament called the Indo Pacific Rugby Championship which would include the Western Force and five other teams from the Indo-Pacific region. For the 2018 season, the competition was launched as World Series Rugby, played as a series of exhibition matches as the precursor to a wider Asia-Pacific competition planned for 2019. The competition was rebranded in November 2018 as Global Rapid Rugby. A season of fourteen matches was played in 2019. The 2020 Global Rapid Rugby season was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic after only one completed round of competition.
