Rio Tinto Appoints Jean-Sébastien Jacques To Succeed Sam Walsh As CEO; Stock Up

(RTTNews) - Shares of Rio Tinto Plc. (RTPPF.PK, RIO.L, RIO, RTNTF.PK) gained around 6 percent in the morning trading in London after the mining giant announced Thursday the appointment of Copper & Coal unit chief executive Jean-Sébastien Jacques as the group chief executive. He succeeds Sam Walsh, who will retire from the business on July 1 after 25 years with Rio Tinto.

To ensure a smooth transition, Jacques will join the board and become deputy chief executive with immediate effect. On July 1, Walsh will also retire as a director after almost seven years on the Rio Tinto board.

The company appointed Chris Salisbury as acting chief executive of the Copper & Coal product group and will attend the Rio Tinto Executive Committee in this capacity. The rest of the executive team remains unchanged.

For more than three years, Jacques was on Rio Tinto's executive committee. Prior to joining Rio Tinto, he worked for more than 15 years across Europe, Southeast Asia, India and the United States in a wide range of operational and functional positions in the aluminium, bauxite and steel industries. He served as group strategy director for Tata Steel Group from 2007 to 2011. Rio Tinto chairman Jan du Plessis said, "Jean-Sébastien is a very experienced executive with a demonstrated track record and brings a unique blend of strategic and operational expertise. He has run complex operations and projects across five commodities and five continents... The board has decided that J-S is the right person to lead Rio Tinto in an increasingly complex world filled with both challenges and opportunities for our industry."

The company noted that Walsh was appointed as chief executive at a challenging time, and in the three years of his leadership, his team have transformed the business, removing more than $6 billion of costs, strengthening the balance sheet and returning more than $13 billion to shareholders.

In London, Rio Tinto shares were trading at 2,046.50 pence, up 6.06 percent.