http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business
BEFORE he became the nation’s greatest philanthropist, Andrew Forrest was a fast-talking salesman who borrowed millions of dollars from a convicted drug dealer and employed disgraced former West Australian premier Brian Burke to help him smash the BHP Billiton-Rio Tinto duopoly in the Pilbara iron ore industry.
Mr Burke, a lobbyist and former close adviser to Mr Forrest, boasts in a new book to be published next week that he was able to lean on bureaucrats and MPs to have key legislation passed for the entrepreneur in just a few months, despite the process normally taking 18 months.
Twiggy: The High-Stakes Life of Andrew Forrest, by Andrew Burrell, a Perth-based journalist with The Australian, also details how four judges in four separate court cases have questioned the businessman’s ethics and truthfulness during his colourful career. Mr Forrest rejected repeated approaches to co-operate with Burrell and to respond to claims made by others in the book.
The unauthorised biography investigates how Mr Forrest transformed himself, through boundless energy and cunning, from a corporate pariah after being removed as chief executive of Anaconda Nickel in 2001 into one of Australia’s most successful entrepreneurs and a philanthropist who is feted by the establishment. Last week, he and his wife, Nicola, donated a record-breaking $65 million to the tertiary sector before a VIP audience that included Tony Abbott, West Australian Premier Colin Barnett and state Governor Malcolm McCusker.
The book describes how Mr Forrest’s business ethos was shaped in the get-rich-quick culture of Perth’s freewheeling stockbroking industry in the 1980s, and details how he was able to acquire a controlling stake in Fortescue Metals Group without ever having any real “skin in the game”.
John Hancock, the son of rival mining magnate Gina Rinehart, also speaks about his admiration for Mr Forrest, who backed him this month in the NSW Supreme Court in his dispute with his mother. Mr Hancock draws parallels between Mr Forrest’s dream in 2003 to build Fortescue into a major exporter and the vision shown by his legendary grandfather Lang Hancock in the 1950s.
“That first meeting with Andrew reminded me of the grand visions my grandfather would discuss with me when I was a child,” says John.
“It was familiar for me to hear about yet-to-be built railways, mines and ports – feats of engineering on a massive scale.”
The biography reveals that Mr Forrest – who is now worth more than $5 billion – was in such financial strife in 2001 that he flew to Manila to secure a $3m loan from Shayne Heffernan, a shadowy Australian financier who had been convicted on drugs charges in Sydney.
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