Minderoo chief John Hartman chops out the fat; Hard times for Sydney restaurateur Paola Toppi

Andrew Forrest and Minderoo Foundation chief executive John Hartman.

Nothing like an anonymous staff survey to check the corporate pulse of an organisation, and over at Andrew and Nicola Forrest’s charitable appendage Minderoo the feedback has been … a little glum.

Survey results suggest they’re less than satisfied under the leadership of CEO John Hartman, according to what Margin Call is hearing.

But perhaps that’s to be expected of this spoiled-rotten workforce? Credit to Hartman, over the past six months he’s taken a shiv to what’s been described (internally, of previous management) as an out-of-control spending culture at the $10bn philanthropic powerhouse.

It had basically been turned into a paradise of corporate piss-taking, an environment where staff were made fat, happy and lazy by rivers of funding that flowed from the Forrest family, and which were spent on them, on labour, rather than the core business of charitable projects.

To that end, Hartman has culled numbers from 350 personnel down to 200 and closed some highly questionable international offices, in Amsterdam, Washington and London. In DC alone, there were four people on the payroll (talk about draining the swamp, eh?)

You might wonder what was being achieved in those countries, and trust us when we say enough of Minderoo’s upper management were wondering the same.

And staff surveys are never going to look good when the boss announces an axing of bonuses. Who knows if those will ever come back. Then again, why a not-for-profit was paying bonuses to its leadership in the first place is, as a spaced-out Del Preston might say, a very different story altogether.

Remarkable, too, is that even with these drastic cuts, still only about half of Minderoo’s money is destined for its charity ­partners. The rest is being fed back into itself for the moment, with the longer-term goal to dispatch 80 per cent of revenue towards charitable spending.

Oh, yes, there’s also a functioning executive now, a sort-of steering committee for the crisis spending on Ukraine, or those ecological projects the Forrests go gaga for. Whereas before, it was apparently just a handful of portfolio leads meeting ad hoc once or twice a year. And for what? To fight over money, of course.

Will row on menu

Sydney restaurateur Paola Toppi has fallen on hard times, according to snippets of personal family linen being aired in the NSW Supreme Court, where she’s suing her brother, Walter, over a carve-up of their mother’s will.

So dire is Toppi’s financial position that she’s trying to fire-sell her Martin Place eatery, Toppi Bar and Restaurant, which she opened less than five years ago – and that was after declaring she’d never open another CBD restaurant again.

Not that a sale will make her much money, it seems.

Sydney restaurateur Paola Toppi. Picture: Jonathan Ng

A buyer expressed interest in June and a sale was due to go ahead for $725,000 last month. Only that seems to have fallen over, with the court hearing both sides remain engaged in negotiations.

If the sale does proceed, eventually, Toppi and her husband Neil Cunningham are likely to take home less than $300,000, part of which is money they invested in the restaurant out of their superannuation funds.

And the case itself?

According to the court, Toppi Sr drew up five wills between 2013 to 2020, with a 2018 document stipulating that half of a Potts Point property be left to Walter and the balance of the estate be apportioned to Paola.

However the final will, in 2020, seemed to make “no provision for Paola” and left the entire estate to her brother.

Gupta feels heat

A bad year for British entrepreneur Sanjeev Gupta and it’s clearly getting worse. That’s after his UK auditors, Lawrence Grant, quit last month because the boss-man wouldn’t – or couldn’t – hand over his global metal group’s audited accounts.

Publicly resigning in this way can only be interpreted as a loss of faith in the information being provided. In Gupta’s case, it’s the assurance that he can still act as a central bank for every single struggling corner of his vast metals empire.

Lawrence Grant were engaged by Liberty OneSteel Primary, a Gupta-controlled entity that owns, among other assets, the Whyalla Steelworks in South Australia. Plenty of trouble happening at Whyalla. There have been lay-offs aplenty and suppliers are complaining that invoices aren’t being paid on time.

British entrepreneur Sanjeev Gupta. Picture: AFP

And so it’s difficult not to draw a link between the auditor’s decision to cut-and-run and the suggestion of deepening troubles for the businessman – even perhaps here, in Australia, where operations have traditionally stayed in rude health.

Look no further than the numbers produced by Liberty Primary Metals Australia (owned by Liberty OneSteel Primary) and the only part of Gupta’s entire business that bore few direct debts. It generated cash of close to $600m for the combined periods of FY22 and FY23.

You would expect that money would cover losses incurred elsewhere, but what about when the flow of cash dries up? That would seem to be a fair question given that Whyalla’s blast furnace shut down in March during routine maintenance. It became unusable for months. In the good old days, when Lex Greensill’s financial wizardry was backing Gupta’s group, the metals magnate could just issue a letter of assurance saying the parent company would cover whatever its subsidiaries could not. But scrutiny of Gupta’s affairs is far more stringent today. We can only imagine that’s what led to a change of heart among the UK auditors.

But nope, nothing to see here, according to an Australia-based spokeswoman. “There is no impact on LPMA operations. LPMA has not made any changes to its auditor. Auditors for Australian operations are engaged in accordance with ASIC guidelines and requirements,” she said.

Liberty’s auditor in Australia? It’s KPMG, and we can only wonder how they’ll react to this embarrassment.