Word: rio
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Sometime in the afternoon of July 5, agents from the Shanghai State Security Bureau - the agency that pursues cases of espionage within China - arrested and detained Stern Hu, an Australian citizen who is a senior Shanghai-based executive for Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto. Three of Hu's deputies, who are Chinese, were also detained that day. On July 8, Rio confirmed that Hu and his colleagues had been detained on suspicion of selling "state secrets." The Chinese government confirmed the detentions only on July 9, and the Australian Consulate in Shanghai said its representatives would be able...
...espionage. But the timing, the people and the company involved in this case make it anything but routine. The arrests have thrown already-fraught relations between Australia and China - its largest trading partner - into an uproar, and for good reason: Stern Hu and his deputies were in charge of Rio Tinto's negotiations over the price of iron ore with Chinese steelmakers. China is now the word's largest consumer of iron ore, and Rio its largest supplier - shoveling vast amounts of high-quality ore from its huge mines in western Australia. The price negotiations were ongoing at the time...
...That alone would make the timing of the arrests interesting, at minimum. But they also come just weeks after Rio Tinto ultimately snubbed what would have been China's largest foreign direct investment ever: a planned $19.5 billion stake that Chinalco - Beijing's largest state-owned aluminum company - had offered Rio late last year, when prices for the commodities it mines had hit rock bottom as the global recession took hold. Since then, prices for iron ore and other commodities have rebounded, in no small part because of demand from China, which is in the midst of a huge, government...
...about it. In fact, an investment banker close to the proposed deal says "they were furious - not just the company, but the government." The banker notes that Chinalco CEO Xiong Weiping was in Australia offering to amend the terms of the deal in order to salvage it just before Rio demurred...
...starters, there are now 57 events, and it moved to the Rio [Las Vegas Hotel & Casino] in 2005. They also now play the Final Table in November so it can be on prime-time television. All of these changes were designed to accommodate and capitalize on a bigger field. The first year I did it, we couldn't even fill a table. They had something like 6,800 total entrants for last year's Main Event. In the beginning, it was always a bunch of touring pros in these. Now there are a lot of amateurs, some of whom...