Rio Tinto CEO Jakob Stausholm
A call for Rio Tinto to abandon its primary London listing doesn’t make economic sense, CEO Jakob Stausholm said after an activist shareholder urged the miner to relocate to Australia.
UK hedge fund Palliser Capital, which holds around $250-million of shares, wrote to Rio’s board on Wednesday, arguing its dual listed structure had been an “unmitigated failure,” leading to approximately $50-billion in value destruction. It also said Rio’s efforts to pursue large-scale M&A had been hampered and called for an independent review to consider listing unification.
“We have just not got anything that tells us that the structure we have is not the best structure,” Stausholm said, in response during an investor presentation in London on Wednesday. “There is a lot of value preserved in that structure.”
The world’s second-largest miner by market value is listed on both the London Stock Exchange and the Australian Securities Exchange. Ever since rival BHP Group decided to collapse its dual listing in 2021, Rio has faced pressure from some activist investors to follow suit. 