Top Rio Tinto Executives Lose Bonuses After Aboriginal Site Blasts
Top Rio Tinto Executives Lose Bonuses After Aboriginal Site Blasts
(Bloomberg) --
Rio Tinto Group will cut bonus payments to CEO Jean-Sebastien Jacques by about 2.7 million pounds ($3.5 million) after the destruction of Aboriginal heritage sites in Australia, though offered him the board’s backing to helm the company’s response to the incident.
Incentives will also be cut for Chris Salisbury, iron ore unit chief executive officer, and Simone Niven, group executive of corporate relations, following a board-led inquiry launched in June to investigate the incident, the London-based producer said Monday.
“J-S is doing a very good job, at the moment, and he has the full confidence of the board,” Chairman Simon Thompson said Monday in a phone interview. “He is the right person to be leading our response to the Juukan incident.”
Rio has been criticized by investors and lawmakers over the incident, when explosions to open up a mining area for the Brockman 4 operation impacted the Juukan Gorge rock shelters in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The sites had evidence of use by humans more than 40,000 years ago and were among the most significant of their type in the country, archaeologists had told the company in a 2018 report.
The board’s review found no single individual, or error, was to blame for the blasts in May, carried out to allow Rio to access about 8 million tons of high-value iron ore.
Three other mining options that would have avoided damaging the sites were rejected, Jacques told an Australian Parliamentary committee earlier this month. Rio failed to tell the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura Aboriginal Corporation, the region’s traditional land owners, about the options that would’ve prevented any damage, he said.
“The review is comprehensive in its recognition that a substantial number of changes need to be made,” said Camille Simeon, a Sydney-based investment manager at Aberdeen Standard Investments, which holds Rio shares and manages assets worth about $645 billion. “From here implementation and execution is critical and will be a focal point.”
Jacques has faced a call to resign over the incident from the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, a small shareholder advocacy group, though most major investors have offered support, Thompson said in the interview. Aberdeen declined to comment on the fund’s view on the future of Rio’s executive team.
“By and large, investors feel that J-S and the team have been doing an extraordinarily great job in very, very difficult circumstances, particularly in 2020,” Thompson said. “They obviously want to see what our response is to Juukan because of the damage that it has done to our reputation for really effective management of cultural heritage.”
The Australian Council of Superannuation Investors, a corporate governance advisory firm whose members include Australia’s two largest pension funds, expressed disappointment that managers had not been held more accountable and said it would’ve favored an independent inquiry.
“The destruction of the caves resulted in a devastating cultural loss,” ACSI CEO Louise Davidson said in a statement. “It is of significant concern to investors because it puts at risk Rio Tinto’s relationship with key stakeholders and its social licence to operate.”
Rio’s board-led review identified failures over nearly a decade that had contributed to the incident, including failures of management systems. The company will add a new social performance function to monitor the company’s approach to community and heritage practices and add processes to escalate heritage issues to senior management.
Health Employees Superannuation Trust Australia, a A$52 billion ($37 billion) pension fund, will continue discussions with Rio on the issues raised, CEO Debby Blakey said in a statement. “We remain concerned that this gap between what the company says and how it acts points to broader oversight and governance issues,” she said.
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