The gamble paid off because in November 1991, two months after getting his MBA, he found himself working in Rio Tinto's Business Evaluation department, where he was able to develop further the option pricing work he had begun at Shell.

After three years in Business Evaluation he became personal assistant to the Group chairman, Sir Derek Birkin and then to his successor, Sir Robert Wilson. "I was in that post at a particularly interesting time because we were negotiating the dual listed company merger with CRA," Johnson says. Then, in 1996, he returned to Business Evaluation but now as the department's head. In October 1999 he transferred to Brisbane as managing director of Comalco's bauxite and alumina operations, returning to London in 2003 when the new Diamonds product group was created.

With eighteen months' experience now under his belt, Johnson says he feels very comfortable with the mining side of the industry but he is particularly relishing the challenge of certain issues unique to the diamond business.

One of these is the Kimberley Process, a government regulated protocol designed to prevent the sale of so called "conflict" diamonds produced by rebel forces, largely in central Africa, and often used to finance civil war. Essentially it is a process of certification, backed up by an audit trail, which assures potential purchasers that the diamonds in question come from a legitimate source. "In the Murowa project in Zimbabwe we are establishing a chain of custody assurance process that will be independently audited," Johnson says.

The concept of good product stewardship applies across all Rio Tinto's activities but has its own particular spin in the diamond business. Most of Rio Tinto's rough diamonds are cut and polished in India, a country where as many as one million people are employed in the industry.

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Editor: Cherry DeGeer