“Have you ever seen a massive company in transition before,in deep transition?” he said.

“Well,I haven’t either,but it’s my responsibility to make one.”

Morris and Hick’s departures add to a growing list of senior executives that have left Fortescue in the past two years.

Forrest on Wednesday said he predicted there would be about 12 “C-suite” level changes as the iron ore miner chased no carbon emissions by 2030,while it built another business in clean energy.

“Some people stay 15 years,some people don’t like it when they get here,” he said.

“Completely fine,absolutely normal.”

Speaking at a conference in Perth on Wednesday,Forrest suggested he and Hick did not agree on how to best help the company hit its aggressive target of zero emissions by 2030.

“All I can say is that people evolve[and] there is a difference between where they’re going and the whole mission of the company before anyone joined,” he said.

“You might want to take it a different direction,like put a handbrake on going green.”

The announcement of Hick’s exit coincided with Fortescue posting a net profit of $US5.5 billion ($8.5 billion) for fiscal 2023,along with an unexpected $US726 million ($1.1 billion) writedown at its troubled Iron Bridge magnetite operation.

The writedown dragged the company’s underlying profit down to $US4.8 billion ($7.4 billion

The billionaire said Fortescue was expected to deliver abnormal results every year,“yet we’re also expected to be completely normal in everything else.“

He dismissed concerns that the loss of senior managers may result in insufficient dissenting voices to challenge his ideas.

“We have a suite of values which really encourages people speaking up,” he said.

“There is no discord with that at all.”

Forrest on Wednesday added that the easy decision for the board of a “normal” company would have been to stick with Hick for a few years to avoid bad media coverage.