Forrest takes dive in the blue sea

Illustration: Rod Clement.

You’d expect a billionaire to be an adept multitasker.

Not only is miner and philanthropist Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, last valued at no less than $6.1 billion on the Stensholt Index, battling it out with rival West Australian mining billionaire Gina Rinehart for Atlas Iron, but at the same time Twiggy’s getting real on his promise to save the world’s oceans.

Forrest is believed to be close to finishing his PhD in marine science at the Universit­y of Western Australia, to which he and his wife Nicola Forrest have given hundreds of millions in recent years.

The doctorate is all about Twiggy upskilling so he can target his good work, but if appearances are correct, the Fortescue billionaire might also be planning some commercial applications of his newly acquired knowledge of the deep, too.

Rather than philanthropic vehicles, Forrest has established a range of corporate vehicles, controlled by his and Nicola’s Forrest Family Investments as well as the couple themselves.

His new framework includes the brand new Ocean Ecology Pty Ltd and Minderoo Marine Ecology, both of which boast former convicted insider trader John Hartman as a director.

The Forrests famously gave Hartman, who was convicted ahead of the same fate for his friend and co-conspirator Oliver Curtis, a second chance after he was released from jail in Sydney in early 2012.

Roxy Jacenko and Oliver Curtis. Picture: Getty Images.

Hartman, now 32, has seized the opportunity with both hands and is now at the heart of many of the Forrests’ latest pursuits.

He is a key director of the new outfits alongside Minderoo exec Felicity Gooding, is enjoying a growing role as head of investment at Forrest’s Minderoo Group and is a director of Forrest’s Harvey Beef, which is WA’s largest beef processor.

Hartman, now a father of two small children and living in Fremantle, is also now a director of Squadron Energy and Resources, which is Minderoo’s natural resources investment division.

Curtis, who got out of prison last June and is now chief operating officer at his wife Roxy Jacenko’s Sydney public relations firm, and jailed Victorian Liberal Party fraud Damien Mantach, can both take heart in that.

Conflict of disinterest

How’s this for strange and uncomfortable bedfellows?

Longtime Sydneysider and Adani independent director Paul Devlin has a new feather in his cap.

In recent weeks, he’s quietly gone on to the board of various Royal Bank of Scotland local vehicles, which is a bit strange because RBS hasn’t really done anything in these parts since about mid-2015.

Devlin is a non-executive director specialising in seat-warming on boards of local subsidiaries of multinational corporations. He has a background in bank property finance.

But RBS, which is controlled by the British government, is one of the myriad global banks that have ruled out lending to the Indian mining and port giant to get its Carmichael coalmine in the Galilee basin in central Queensland up and running.

Meantime, Adani has another international rival bank, Rothschild, advising on the potential partial sale of the Adani Abbot Point Terminal, towards the parent gaining more funding for the mine’s development. Each of our Four Pillars have also ruled out handing over any cash.

Like Rothschild, Adani has some supporters in this market also prepared to put up their hands publicly. Just ask controversial senator David Leyonhjelm, who has bought AAPT corporate bonds.

Just one more thing that he and fellow senator Sarah Hanson-Young don’t have in common.

A home in Domain

Domain executive chair Nick Falloon would be pleased to have finally — after six months — found a new chief executive in local media boss Jason Pellegrino to replace former golden child Antony Catalano.

The 42-year-old Google chief’s stocks are high in Falloon’s book, but not as high, we note, as The Cat’s when Domain was structurally separated from its parent Fairfax in November last year.

Father of four Pellegrino (The Cat tops that with eight children) will start at Domain at the end of next month on a fixed annual pay of $1.2 million.

He’ll potentially get a short-term bonus of up to $960,000 and long-term incentives worth up to $1.44m a year for a maximum possible ongoing package of $3.6m.

That’s been boosted by a substantial “golden hello” from chairman Falloon, comprising a $500,000 cash bonus that will be paid four months after he starts, plus a $2m parcel of “engagement shares”, which Pellegrino will get if he’s still there in mid-2020.

So all up, he’s cut a sweet $6.1m deal.

Catalano, who stayed only about two months as boss after Domain debuted on the exchange as a stand-alone entity, was on the same $1.2m fixed pay and maximum short-term incentive of $960,000 as Pellegrino. But the former boss’s real worth to Falloon at the property enterprise was reflected in an allocation of up to $5.04m in options at the time of the float for an all-up spin-off deal of $7.02m.

New Domain boss Jason Pellegrino . Picture: AAP

Catalano is now working with, and is a shareholder in, Domain’s biggest client Tomorrow, a real estate advertising buyer, which will put the old and new bosses face to face across the negotiating table.

Awkward.

Wollongong-born Pellegrino, before his decade at Google, worked for millionaire contemporary art collector Danny Goldberg at his Dakota Corporation family office.

Pellegrino, with his British-born wife Helen, also knows something of local real estate. In recent years as his career blossomed, he’s climbed Sydney’s ladder of opportunity from southeastern Kensington to become part of the eastern suburbs set. At the end of 2015, he lashed out $5.75m for a five-bed mansion in Bellevue Hill, complete with pool and harbour views.

Wonder if he first found it on Domain?