Always look a gift horse in the mouth from ‘Twiggy’ Forrest.

“A truly magnificent gift!” “A gift of love!” “It cannot get any better than this!”  Our Prime Minister was besides himself, drooling with lofty praise for Andrew Forrest’s pledge to give $ 400 million ( tax deductable) to Australia. Our TV almost exploded with Mr Turnbull’s hyperbole but instead decided to just turn a shade of red.

One mustn’t get too churlish when somebody is willing to donate $400 million. But don’t count the chickens before the eggs have hatched. Mr Forrest is much more known for his grandstanding and complicated business misadventures than genuine generosity. He certainly proved his money making ability as a stock-market rookie when still young. His salesmanship was honed during that period. This was followed up by his alpaca importation from Chile and Peru. He bought alpacas from the poorest of the indigenous Indians for peanuts and sold them on in Australia for huge amounts. The alpaca fibre was the ‘new golden fleece’ and this was pitched to the high-end of town’s legal fraternity as a handy tax dodge when hobby farms were at their peak.

The law on hobby farms was changed and losses on alpacas could no longer be used to offset income from other areas of earnings. The golden fleece of the alpaca lost its lustre when histograms ( frequency of measurements) came in at 30 microns or more. It was unsalable and the sheep farmers could not be happier and had trouble keeping in their laughter. It was just a huge scam. This adventure landed Twiggy in Courts as most of his subsequent business ventures did. Twiggy Forrest is master salesman but he also loves grandstanding especially being photographed with the luminaries of the time.

People might remember he was photographed with the Iranian Ayatollah and  Pope Francis in 2015.  He was criticised for  overstepping his mark. That never worried him though. He is full of enthusiasm and bluster. It took considerable cunning and diplomacy to get that photograph. Some saw it as a blatent exploitation of the Pope. His idea was to stop slavery! The Vatican has since removed Mt Forrest and his phoney pledge about fighting slavery and felt that the iron ore business man had used the Vatican.

Before all his latest adventure in digging up iron ore, he was involved in Anaconda Nickel. A company he floated on the sharemarket whereby he claimed a new amazing way of extracting nickel from old nickel tailings. Thousands of shareholders lost money on this. Mr Forrest seems to forever make exaccerated claims which through his salesmanship and enthusiasm always find new victims.

I feel Mr Turnbull would have been wise to do a Google on Mr Forrest. If this gift eventuates it will be the first time Mr Forrest has held a promise. However, I feel this might well end up biting Turnbull on the bum.   Did he not question all the TV hoopla and photo ops. with this pledge? Perhaps Mr Forrest fancies himself to be in the same league as Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates or Saudi Prince Al-Waheed bin Talal’s. ( 32 Billion to charity)   

I hope I am just churlish and that the pledge will turn out real!

 

 

Tags: Anaconda Nickel, Andrew Forrest, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Pope Francis, Saudi Prince Al-Waheed bin Talal’s, Turnbull