Unseasonal springtime snow decorates the corner of New York’s Central Park West and 79th Street. Inside the grand edifice that sits on this corner, the American Museum of Natural History, Jac Nasser is hosting a fundraiser for the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, in front of the reef exhibit.

The guest list is carefully crafted, eclectic, and surprisingly abbreviated. The museum would not routinely host dinner for just 30 people. The rule is at least 100. But Jac asked. And the outgoing chairman of BHP Billiton, the man whose controversial years running Ford Motor Company made him a household name in the US, has a habit of winning negotiations. Nasser has been making deals since his teenage years, when he and brother Jamie started a bicycle-making business in the inner Melbourne suburb of Northcote.