Fortescue to front investors as market demands energy spend details
Fortescue Metal’s new mining chief executive, Dino Otranto, will meet with the company’s local investors this week after a volatile period during which his predecessor left after just six months in the top job and with brokers warning shareholders were in the dark about the board’s risk appetite.
Mr Otranto, and Fortescue’s energy chief executive Mark Hutchinson, will meet with investors in Sydney and Melbourne before flying to New York and London to meet major international shareholders later this month.
Some of Fortescue’s bigger investors are concerned about the rate of executive departures at the Andrew Forrest-chaired group. Bloomberg
At the meetings, the executives are expected to field questions about the company’s strategy, and how it will decide what green energy and hydrogen projects to fund. Under Fortescue chairman Andrew Forrest’s watch, the company has backed numerous projects and has yet to disclose which will go ahead.
Mr Otranto’s predecessor, Fiona Hick, departed the company last Monday followed quickly by her appointed chief financial officer Christine Morris. Guy Debelle, a former Reserve Bank deputy governor, stepped down as non-executive director of the Fortescue energy division board on Thursday.
Lachlan Shaw, an analyst at UBS, said constant leadership changes were becoming a “theme”. “Naturally, when there is a lot of change in leadership across the various organisations, investors ask questions,” he told The Australian Financial Review on Sunday.
“We’re talking about significant changes to the nature of Fortescue’s business and that is going to have ramifications, hence the importance of leadership stability.”
In particular, Mr Shaw added, investors wanted “more information about what the
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