$14 Billion Write-Down Costs Rio Tinto CEO His Job

Like many of the CEOs at the mega-mining companies, Albanese, who has been at Rio Tinto for more than 30 years, was a serial acquirer who paid around $38 billion for Canada’s Alcan aluminum in a giant miscalculation on where the aluminum market was heading. The 2011 purchase of a coal property in Mozambique that cost Rio Tinto $3 billion of the write-down was the last straw.

Rio’s board chairman said:

The Rio Tinto Board fully acknowledges that a write-down of this scale in relation to the relatively recent Mozambique [coal] acquisition is unacceptable. We are also deeply disappointed to have to take a further substantial write-down in our aluminium businesses, albeit in an industry that continues to experience significant adverse changes globally.

Albanese also beat back a $140 billion takeover offer from BHP Billiton Ltd. (NYSE: BHP) in 2007.

Albanese joins former Anglo American CEO Cynthia Carroll and former Xstrata CEO Mick Davis in the unemployment line. BHP’s Marius Kloppers is also on a short rope, as the company’s board has begun a search for his successor.