Capitalism haters and one-eyed Greenies might have a good reason to downgrade their disdain for the flagbearers of big business after a self-confessed wealth accumulator just gave $5 billion to a charity that is committed to ridding our oceans of plastics, fighting modern slavery, coral preservation, indigenous employment, discouraging vaping and a whole lot more.

Fortescue Metals Group founders Andrew and Nicola Forrest have dug deep to set a record for philanthropy by donating $5 billion to the couple’s own charity called Minderoo. But don’t worry about the Forrest pair ever coming up short for dough, because their wealth has been valued at $30 billion!

Of course, a lot of this wealth is linked to the price of iron ore and the value of FMG’s share price but given the number of billionaires worldwide (according to Forbes there were 2,668 of them in 2022), the couple is setting such a great example for this very small group of excessively high achievers.

People who become hugely successful business builders like Andrew Forrest tend to find the best way of doing many things, so they even learn how to do donations better than most.

The couple has shifted $5 billion worth of FMG shares from their private company Tattarang to their charitable trust Minderoo. This means Minderoo is the fourth biggest shareholder in FMG. By holding the shares, the charity will get around half-a-billion dollars in dividend payments each year.

As Tattarang is a private company, the donation is tax deductible and Minderoo won’t be selling the shares. If they did that, it would drive down the share price. It will collect the dividends and spend it on the positive activities it has historically supported.

Andrew and Nicola are in a group of billionaires who signed the Giving Pledge, which means they intend to give most of their wealth away rather than simply leave it to their kids!

The Giving Pledge was the brainwave of the Oracle of Omaha Warren Buffett, who’s one of the world’s greatest investors, and his mates Bill and Melinda Gates. In 2010, they got 40 of the USA’s wealthiest people to give most of their wealth to address society’s most pressing problems. And many of the ‘who’s who’ of wealth have signed the pledge!

Clearly, there are billionaires and other successful capitalist business builders that people of the left and the green side of politics can justifiably be negative about, but there are some who deserve to be recognised as being committed to giving back. It also shows that the free enterprise, corporate-supportive economic system has potential to be a force for good, that shouldn’t be ignored when it comes to criticising businesses behaving badly.