How often does the board meet and what happens?
We have eight scheduled meetings a year of the full board comprising the chairman, the chief executive, the finance director and nine non executive directors.

They are mostly held in London, although at least one meeting a year is held in Australia, usually at the time of the annual shareholder meeting. In addition the sub-committees of the board meet regularly. In the case of the audit committee, which meets the most, this amounts to seven times a year. Prior to board and committee meetings papers for discussion are circulated.

At one time a person used to fly specially to Australia with the papers for board members there, but now we have a dedicated confidential intranet portal accessible to the directors where they can download the documents – although we do give them hard copy whenever possible.

Are there other board activities?
Our non executive directors are encouraged to get to know our businesses, so if they are travelling on other work anywhere in the world we arrange for them to visit Rio Tinto operations when possible.

In addition, once or twice a year, visits to operations for the whole board are arranged, usually combined with a board strategy review meeting in line with UK best practice. In September last year we had a board meeting in Beijing and directors split up to visit different steel mill customers of Rio Tinto Iron Ore.

Recently we held a strategy review session in the Pilbara, which provided us with the opportunity to visit the iron ore operations. We’ve also been to Kennecott Utah Copper, the Comalco Alumina Refinery, Argyle Diamonds and underground at Northparkes copper mine.