Twiggy Forrest’s family in ship shape

Illustration: Rod Clement.

There’s a new “Nicola” in the life of Fortescue founder Andrew Forrest.

Not that the iron ore billionaire’s wife Nicola — the chief executive of the couple’s philanthropic Minderoo Foundation — need worry.

Nicola Forrest with her pug, Yoda.

The new girl (“FMG Nicola”) is the first of Fortescue’s under-construction fleet of eight very large ore carriers — the enormous ships that will ferry the Third Force’s iron ore from Western Australia’s Port Hedland to Xi Jinping’s People’s Republic of China.

Australian ambassador to China Jan Adams (released from Malcolm Turnbull’s PMO earlier in the year) joined For­tescue’s chief executive Nev Power for the naming ceremony yesterday in Jiangsu Province.

Forrest — who is in the running to be Australian of the Year after winning the West Australian title — has often said For­tescue is more of a family than a company.

To underline the point, the next three in the fleet are “FMG Grace”, “FMG Sophia” and “FMG Sydney” — named after the chairman’s two daughters and son.

Looks like a handy solution to one of the great conundrums for our billionaires — finding something novel to give their rich family members for Christmas.

Such are the perks of having a one-third stake in an iron ore company worth almost $20 billion.

The other four bulk carriers’ names are still to be chosen. Well-placed company insiders believe one will be named after the Forrests’ pug, Yoda.

That would still leave three more for the board to dangle over Power and his executive team. What a performance incentive.

Bank on the hunt

Less than a fortnight ago Tony Cripps, the boss of the Australian arm of the British-headquartered banking behemoth HSBC, announced HSBC was after a slice of the local private banking scene.

Bianca Rinehart in the Pilbara.

And to go by the crowd at Sydney summer lunching institution Otto Ristorante, HSBC is not wasting time pursuing Australia’s richest families.

John Hancock, the son of Australia's richest woman, Gina Rinehart. Picture: Sam Mooy.

Enjoying a long lunch in a prime spot on the Woolloo­mooloo Wharf yesterday were businessman John Hancock — son of Australia’s richest woman Gina Rinehart — and the head of HSBC’s private bank in Australia, Hayden Matthews.

Now that would be a good get for the new firm’s fledgling operation. Especially if the bank also gets the custom of Hancock’s sister and fellow litigant, Bianca Rinehart.

The brother and sister duo engaged in a bitter legal dispute with their mother for almost half a decade over a trust left by their late grandfather, Lang Hancock.

Last year, they had a major breakthrough as a NSW Supreme Court judge appointed Bianca a trustee, giving her and John a 23 per cent stake in Hancock Prospecting. That makes them a billionaire duo on the current surging iron ore price.

The familial legal dispute is scheduled to return to court next year. Looks like HSBC is confident their stake is sticking.

The write stuff

Federal parliament finally rises for the year tomorrow, which will give our pollies time to traipse around their electorates, reintroduce themselves to their families and bang on with extra-parliamentary projects.

Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie. Picture: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas.

In between putting Tasmania first, independent senator Jacqui Lambie will be toiling away on the book she has promised independent publisher Allen & Unwin.

The manuscript on her life — 45 feisty years’ worth so far — is due to the publishing house in the new year. It’s scheduled to hit bookstores by mid next year, although as National Farmers Federation boss Fiona Simson learnt this week, Lambie’s a headstrong woman.

Our guess is it will be done when it’s bloody well done or you can get stuffed.

A&U are describing the book as more a memoir than an autobiography — all the better to unshackle Lambie, a daughter of Ulverstone, on the north coast of Tasmania, a corporal in the Australian Army, a mother of two children, a terror of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and, since 2013 — with a bit of help from Clive Palmer — a senator.

By the end of 2015, then liberated of the Palmer United Party, Lambie paid $300,000 for a three-bedroom home in Romaine — giving her what fellow writer Virginia Woolf called “a room of one’s own”.

The place is just to the west of where she was born and a little further from the lovely Devonport on the north coast. It’s held through her grandly named Milverton International.

And how much longer till Attorney-General George Brandis gets working on his memoirs?

While rumours swirl about his endangered future in cabinet, Brandis surely can’t wait to get away from Canberra to his holiday home at magnificent Peregian Beach on the Sunshine Coast, just up from Coolum — a rare pocket of Queensland fit for the Oxford man.

Scrawl thing

Retail richie Naomi Milgrom is a hands-on type of boss.

Naomi Milgrom, Australia's eighth-richest woman.

Her longstanding chief financial officer of the Sussan Group, Russell Mullane, has signed the paperwork for the Sussan, Sportsgirl and Suzanne Grae brands for almost 15 years.

But now it seems Milgrom wants her scrawl on the company’s official documents.

As of Monday, it’s out with Mullane and in with Milgrom as secretary of the myriad group of companies. But rest assured Mullane isn’t going anywhere.

“I’ll be here till retirement,” Mullane told us yesterday. “They’ll have to push me out.”

Indeed, after taking in a Grand Tour of Europe over the northern summer, Mullane is back in his Melbourne office crunching the numbers for Milgrom, Australia’s eighth-richest woman, whose fortune was last valued at $582 million.

Cake tales

While NSW Premier Mike Baird was talking about negative gearing and federal taxation reform at the National Press Club in Canberra yesterday, down in Victoria bigger issues were playing out.

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews and his wife Catherine. Picture: Jake Nowakowski.

ABC local radio in Melbourne put a shout out to listeners with wedding cake tales.

On the blower was “Cathy from Mulgrave”, who — in detail worthy of a blind Greek poet — told the story of how she and her husband missed out on even a morsel of the multi-tiered cake a friend had made for their new year’s eve wedding 18 years ago. The loved-up couple were having too good a time to eat.

Not the greatest call-in ever, but the backstory was better.

Announcer Sami Shah quizzed Cathy further to discover she was Catherine Andrews, the wife of Victorian state Premier Dan Andrews. Seems she was seizing the moment to talk about something other than youth detention and asthma deaths.

Look, it’s not the best counter to senator David Leyonhjelm’scritique of chairman Jim Spigelman’s ABC as unrepresentative and stuck “inside the goat cheese curtain”. Still, impressive audience engagement.