Jakob Stausholm will retire from the $107 bln miner after just over four years. He delivered respectable returns, but led an expensive charge into lithium and leaves Rio Tinto’s unwieldy dual listing structure intact.

Rio Tinto has today been confirmed as the preferred partner for the Salares Altoandinos lithium project in the Atacama region of Chile by Empresa Nacional de Minería (ENAMI), a state-owned Chilean mining company.