Jakob Stausholm

In May 2020, Rio Tinto blasted through the Juukan Gorge rock shelters in Western Australia — 46,000-year-old sites sacred to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura peoples — to expand an iron ore mine. The destruction provoked global outrage, a parliamentary inquiry, and the forced departure of then-CEO Jean-Sébastien Jacques and two other senior executives. Stausholm, a Danish executive who had joined Rio Tinto in 2018 as CFO after a career at Maersk and Shell, was chosen to rebuild trust with Indigenous communities, governments, and investors. He has made cultural heritage protection a central governance priority, established new engagement protocols, and emphasized the company's commitment to respecting traditional owners' rights — though critics note that rebuilding trust after such destruction takes decades, not years. Rio Tinto is the world's second-largest mining company by market capitalization (after BHP) and a dominant producer of iron ore (its Pilbara operations generate the majority of group profits), aluminum (through its integrated bauxite-alumina-aluminum chain), and copper. The company is dual-listed on the London and Australian stock exchanges and has operations across six continents. Strategically, Stausholm is positioning Rio Tinto as a "materials for the energy transition" company. He led the $6.7 billion acquisition of lithium producer Arcadium in 2024 — Rio Tinto's largest deal in over a decade — to gain exposure to battery metals. He is also developing the massive Simandou iron ore project in Guinea (one of the world's largest untapped high-grade iron ore deposits) and expanding copper production. The core tension in Stausholm's strategy is balancing the enormous cash flows from iron ore — a commodity whose long-term demand depends on China's construction-driven steel production — with the capital-intensive pivot toward copper, lithium, and other energy transition metals.