Tom Albanese had no choice but to step down this January as chief executive of Rio Tinto, one of the world’s biggest miners. The British-Australian firm had just suffered $14 billion in impairments against its 2012 profit.
Some $10 billion of the charge related to aluminium. What appeared to tip the balance, however, was an 80% write-down on the CEO’s $3.7 billion acquisition, only two years previously, of a coal project – not in Australia, Canada, or even South Africa, but in Mozambique.
It indicates just how much excitement – and hubris – the mining industry has shown in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly outside South Africa, over the past five years.
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