RIO TINTO CEO QUITS OVER DESTRUCTION OF ABORIGINAL ROCK SHELTERS

Rio Tinto parted ways with its chief executive and two deputies on Friday, bowing to a shareholder outcry over the destruction of two significant Aboriginal rock shelters and what was seen as the miner's inadequate initial response, Melanie Burton reported for Reuters on September 11, 2020.

The departures are the highest profile examples yet of the increasing muscle of institutional investors to hold companies to account for actions that fall short in areas such as human rights obligations and expected community standards. They also come amid heightened sensitivity in Australia to its treatment of Aboriginal people, who are over-represented in the country’s prisons and suffer poorer health and shorter average life spans.

CEO Jean-Sébastien Jacques, who has led Rio since 2016, will step down by March 31 next year, while iron ore boss Chris Salisbury, and Simone Niven, head of corporate relations, the unit responsible for dealing with indigenous communities, will also depart.

The executive changes “should be a wake-up call for the Australian iron ore sector and mining companies worldwide on their relationships with First Nations people,” said Brynn O’Brien, executive director of activist investor the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility. Activists and investors said Rio had fallen short in an earlier board-led review into how the miner legally detonated rock shelters showing 46,000 years of human habitation at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia against the wishes of traditional owners. The review had recommended cutting short-term bonuses for some executives.

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