RE: Tom Albanese out at Rio Tinto Perhaps volumes can be written about Rio Tinto's blunderous escapades and bad timing.
One thing stands out: large resource corporations are often prone to waiting until the price of a commodity and its respective market, reaches astronomical heights before they start to make their move to acquire growth assets.
Of course, by that time, they often end up paying dearly for those assets, as is the case with Rio Tinto, BHP, etc.
One can speculate whether this is due to the BOD, and hence the corporate culture cultivating a habit of risk aversion or just plain bad business decision making. More likely, it may be a combination of the two.
A question has to be asked at this point: Why is it, as investors, we are often careful to purchase assets at fair or even below what the market is valuing those assets, while we tolerate these corporations when they do the exact opposite -- pay dearly for assets at the top of asset bubbles?