Although Rio has now regained third position in the global hierarchy (based on its market capitalisation) Sergeant ascribes this achievement almost wholly to the company’s ascendancy in the seaborne iron ore trade. (What he doesn’t add is that, as last month’s arrests of Rio’s top Chinese negotiators have shown, Rio isn’t exactly flavour of the month at the moment in the Peoples’ Republic which, after all, is by far the company’s chief target of that trade). Meanwhile, despite a great show of recently getting back on its feet, Rio’s recent rights issue actually reduced value to its shareholders rather than increasing it. (The number of shareholders leaped by nearly a third, while the worth of their shareholdings fell). And – despite some reduction in its overall debt – Rio is still the world’s most indebted mining company.
See http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=9430.