Rio Tinto sacks aluminium boss Ivan Vella over ‘confidentiality breach’
Sean SmithThe West Australian
Thu, 16 November 2023 10:18AM
Ivan Vella. Credit: Ross Swanborough/The West Australian
Rio Tinto has sensationally sacked its outgoing aluminium boss Ivan Vella, citing a breach of its confidentiality policies.
Mr Vella was serving out time ahead of his departure from Rio in December to take up the chief executive position at battery metals company IGO.
The shock termination will cost the mining executive as much as $14 million in share rewards.
Rio boss Jakob Stausholm said in an email to staff on Thursday seen by thewest.com.au that the mining giant had “terminated the contract” of Mr Vella, who had subsequently left the company “with immediate effect”.
“The termination relates to actions that did not follow Rio Tinto’s guidance on acceptable management of confidential information,” Mr Stausholm said.
“The first stage of our external investigation has concluded that Ivan failed to maintain the standards expected of him relating to this topic, under our global code of conduct.
“It is incumbent on all of us to understand to understand (Rio’s code of conduct) and adhere to our obligations, including our role in safeguarding our information.”
Mr Stausholm emphasised that the company had not identified any information that had been compromised by the breach.
He said also that Mr Vella had stepped down from Rio’s senior executive team in June after accepting the IGO job and had also surrendered leadership of the aluminium division as part of the transition.
Such a public sacking of a senior boss in corporate Australia is extremely unusual.
Under the company’s executive termination policies, any unvested share rewards accumulated by Mr Vella lapse with his departure.
According to Rio’s 2022 annual reward, he was sitting on about 112,000 unvested “bonus deferral, and management and performance stock rewards worth a potential $14m at the company’s current share price.
IGO Price at posting:
$8.94 Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
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