It was late 2015 when Fortescue CEO Andrew Forrest was hiking through a remote region of Australia known as the Kimberley, and slipped into a gorge. The freak accident left Forrest, the founder and chairman of the metals giant, facing many months of recovery, and prevented him from running his $56 billion mining company.Fortescue’s leadership now comes with the insight from a PhD in marine ecology, a four-year course which Forrest took during his recovery that reshaped the way he runs one of the world’s largest iron ore producers.Speaking on the “In Good Company” podcast with Norges Bank Investment Management CEO Nicolai Tangen, Forrest recounted the accident a decade ago, which happened as he was hiking through remote canyons.
“Part of this climb involved going around a ledge over a large pool of water and the ledge gave way, and I slipped into the water,” he said. “My leg got caught on a tree root … and it snapped my leg like you would snap a matchstick. But it went the wrong way, it went the opposite way to how knees normally bend.”
Forrest believes he passed out from the pain, saying when he came to, he was “looking up at the surface of the water, and it had gone still, like a mirror. I realized that a) I was on my own, b) I was drowning, and c) I’d been there for a little while because there were no ripples in the water.”
