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Guy Debelle was frontrunner to be the next Reserve Bank governor before he left the RBA for Fortescue last year.Credit:Oscar Colman

On Friday,he joined the board of ASX-listed Tivan,which is developing critical minerals deposits in northern Australia,and has a market capitalisation 600 times smaller than that of Fortescue.

Debelle is investing $25,000 in Tivan by the way of a private placement of shares at 7.2¢ a share,with the investment subject to shareholder approval at the company’s 2023 annual general meeting. Tivan shares jumped more than 33 per cent to 7.6¢ on the news.

Debelle,who spent 25 years at the Reserve Bank before moving to the private sector,said his time at Fortescue had allowed him to understand first-hand the technology and project management challenges of delivering the big projects the green energy transition requires.

“It takes hard work to harness the opportunities,” he said.

Debelle said he was talking to Tivan executive chair Grant Wilson for some time,and those discussions gave him a direct insight into the huge opportunity of critical minerals. He was also attracted to Tivan’s focus on working with traditional owners.

Debelle’s departure follows theshock exit of Fortescue Metals Group’s chief executive Fiona Hick on Monday,which was swiftly followed bythe departure of the iron ore miner’s chief financial officer,Christine Morris. Both Hick and Morris had short stints at the miner,with the CEO leaving just shy of six months in the role and the CFO staying only three months.

Fortescue shares were down 5.2 per cent on Friday.

Andrew Forrest,the miner’s executive chairman and Australia’s richest man,said earlier this week that the steady churn of senior executives was a natural part of the process of a company reinventing itself.

“Have you ever seen a massive company in transition before,in deep transition?” he said on Wednesday,before the departures of Morris and Debelle. “Well,I haven’t either,but it’s my responsibility to make one.”

Forrest predicted there would be about 12 C-suite level changes as the iron ore miner chased its target ofzero 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,” Forrest said. “Completely fine,absolutely normal.”

Hick’s shock departure diverted attention to Fortescue’s full-year financial results when an unexpected $US726 million ($1.1 billion) writedown at the miner’s troubled Iron Bridge magnetite operation dragged net profit down to $US5.5 billion ($8.5 billion) for fiscal 2023.

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 might result in insufficient dissenting voices to challenge his ideas.

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

“There is no discord with that at all.”

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