What significant events or people influenced
your career?
From a people perspective, head and shoulders above anyone
else was my father. I have huge respect and admiration for
him. He’s been an absolute rock. Even if you’ve done the
wrong thing, he’s there to support you: it’s unconditional, the
same with Mum.
In work, Graeme Hutton – a legendary West Australian.
‘
Champ’ as he was known, Graeme pegged a lot of iron ore leases
for Lang Hancock; he was an amazing geological, prospecting,
football-playing West Australian. Really passionate about the
industry and a colourful character… he’d rolled more cars;
he’d crashed more aeroplanes; he’d drunk more beer; he was
as leathery as they come. Graeme would go out prospecting with
a rifle and a dog, but take no food. He’d live with the Aborigines
and he would go for four or six weeks at a time, scouring the
outback for new discoveries. Right up until the day he passed
away, he was an extraordinary man. That happened, sadly,
just before we were successful with Sandfire, which was a
company he put together with Miles Kennedy and myself.
So in terms of people; my father and certainly Graeme
Hutton. In terms of events; the first major event was in 1981
and was probably the catalyst for many things that happened
during my life and played a big part in shaping where I’ve
ended up today. I was playing a huge amount of water sports
and soccer. In 1980, I received a phone call from the Australian
Soccer Federation, and was offered a scholarship to the Institute
of Sport to play soccer. That was the first year of the Institute in
Canberra – 1981. So I spent my last years of school in Canberra.
It was a wonderful time; we played soccer up and down the
eastern seaboard and toured the UK. At that stage I was going
to do physical education at university, and I was planning to go
to Europe and play soccer. But in the last game of the season,
we were playing the Australian under-19 team and I injured my
knee very badly. My career was finished. My scholarship was
not renewed and I was utterly dejected. But I had reasonably
good marks in my last year of school, so I was able to get
in to study commerce here at UWA. I got C’s in the first year,
B’s in the second year and A’s in the third year because I started
to enjoy it.
The other major event was the stock market crash of October
1987.
It was a major event that changed my whole life. I got out
of accounting in a world that was blowing up, in a stock market
crash that was horrendous. I probably got into resources in the
worst possible time, but it became a great opportunity because
this is where I am today. I can’t imagine doing anything else.
So how did you get started in resources?
As a very young accountant, two days after the crash, I was
moved from corporate services (mergers, acquisitions and
takeovers; which was quite exciting, relatively speaking)
into insolvency. In that first day, I had to foreclose on
someone’s business and say to the chap who’d been running
the business for 30 years, ‘I’ve been appointed by the bank.
Here’s a locksmith to change the locks. You can now come and
work for me, and we’ll try and salvage your business’. I went
back to my new partner and said, ‘I’m resigning. This is not
for me’.
The next day I started in resources, with Patrick O’Connor
and Miles Kennedy, and I was with them for seven or eight
years. We developed what is still today the biggest gold
mine in New Zealand. It was a project which BHP owned
originally, and said would never work. We were the minority
partner in a joint venture, but had a pre-emptive right to
buy BHP out – which we did. As we developed that project,
I lived in New Zealand and worked under the stewardship of
Patrick O’Connor.
What have been some of your hardest
challenges, and how have you overcome them?
Dealing with the disappointment of what I thought was going
to be my career (soccer) the ground was literally torn out from
under me. I was devastated. But I was lucky to have good
support structures (friends and family) around me, and it wasn’t
long until I went to university. I then got into accounting and
that led ultimately into resources.
After completing my commerce degree I started working in
1985,
at the age of 21, with Arthur Young (now Ernst and Young)
and did three courses simultaneously while working full time.
This included my Professional Year or “PY” to get my articles
as a chartered accountant. I also completed a Post Graduate
Diploma in Accounting and Finance from Curtin University
and the Securities Institute of Australia course.
The Professional Year is really intense. When I got my
first assignment I was virtually in tears. It was like a 50-page
questionnaire, and I didn’t understand what it was about.
But by the end of that year, I realised how much I’d learned,
and was able to get through.
I wouldn’t think of myself as an academic in the slightest,
but I just had to deal with a seriously heavy work-load – every
weekend there was another assignment or another exam.
Maybe that builds character; always challenging yourself. You
just have to get on with it.