Fortescue Metals Group’s chief financial officer Ian Wells will depart the company in 22 days and will not present the company’s February half-year financial results, in the latest executive departure to rock the company and its billionaire talisman Andrew Forrest.

Mr Wells is the ninth senior executive to leave Fortescue in a two-year period marked by strategic change and extraordinary staff turnover, and his sudden exit was described as both “challenging” and “not ideal” by members of the financial community.