Ann: Takeovers Panel findings in relation to ERA, page-2

Rio Tinto charged ERA $98m in consulting fees

After Rio Tinto’s pasting by the Takeovers Panel on Wednesday, the miner’s eccentric chief executive Jean-Sébastien Jacques must be wondering why ERA investor Richard Magides won’t just fit in or f--- off!
Rio, which owns 68.4 per cent of ERA, has withdrawn to “consider our options” after a ruling of unacceptable circumstances in the $476 million equity raising it was underwriting to dilute ERA’s minority shareholders into oblivion. In the case brought by Magides, the Takeovers Panel scolded ERA for taking “insufficient measures … to ensure the independence of a committee formed to evaluate, negotiate and … approve any funding …agreement with Rio Tinto”. Indeed, the “independent” committee allowed a Rio-appointed director to observe those very deliberations!
Rio Tinto chief CEO Jean-Sebastien Jacques.
Page 18 of Rio’s conduct policy, “The way we work”, requires that “we use good judgement to avoid situations where there may be, or even appear to be, a conflict of interest” and “we report any actual or potential conflict of interest”. So sacred was this set of corporate commandments that Rio’s board terminated energy and minerals boss Alan Davies and chief lawyer Debra Valentine in 2016 for failing, allegedly, to maintain them. So then whose scalp will be the price for this prima facie breach as determined by the Australian government (and which ERA is not challenging)? Hint: nobody’s. Rio only works this way when it suits the mad Frenchman.
In its trammelling of ERA’s minorities, the largest shareholder has not had “the courage and commitment to do what is right”, nor to “maintain our focus on ethics, transparency and building mutual trust” (page 9).
Incredibly, since 2002, Rio has transferred to itself $374 million in “other reimbursements paid for commercial services received”, excluding uranium trading. Over the same period, it has charged ERA an outrageous $98 million in consulting fees.
“The way we rape and pillage” is more like it. And now Rio wants to walk away from more than 200 million pounds of uranium sitting in Ranger and Jabiluka because the spot price is in the dunny. Because traditional owners. Because non-core. Here’s a tip for free: if uranium was still $100 a pound, Bold Bataarhimself would’ve walked the length of Kakadu National Park, barefoot, to negotiate a permit extension. Juxtapose Rio’s bogus creed with its consistently odious actions. You’ll get a sense of how Magides and his fellow unitholders must feel. Nauseous.