The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.
LONDON — Sam Walsh is a curious mix of plain-spoken modesty and polished style. With his cherubic face and easy smile, the Australian chief executive officer of Rio Tinto, the world’s second-largest mining company, would make the perfect Santa Claus. He is addicted to Coca-Cola, loves to tell stories and has a dotty obsession with milk jugs, the little porcelain ones you find on tea or coffee trays.
In China, he once paid for an entire dinner set just so he could nab the one jug that went with it. “I pulled the milk jug out and stuck it in my pocket,” he says, grinning. “The store owner went mad because she was left with a dinner set without a jug.”
Yet he is also addicted to fine suits – Canali is his brand – collects modern art and, along with his wife Leanne, is a regular at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
His easy-going manner is deceiving; his job is to fix the damage inflicted on the company by an epic spending spree that was highlighted by the $38-billion (U.S.) purchase in 2007 of Montreal’s Alcan, probably the biggest, stupidest resources deal of the last decade. He is doing it with the steely efficiency of the great white sharks hunting in the waters off his home town of Perth, Western Australia.