Rio Tinto's CFO, Guy Elliott

Has the level of background activity atrophied his focus? Suddenly, he’s bolder. “Be careful with the use of the word focus,” he warns. “There’s no way we can’t be focused on the balance sheet, the tax, the debt, the accounts and the control systems. I sign the accounts, I go and see the investors intensively all the time. But the last couple of years in this company has been a period of the most intense corporate activity we’ve seen in my time.”

It is easy to forget that Elliott came into Rio in 1980 as a marketeer, selling uranium to nuclear power stations – “a fascinating time” - rising to become president of Rio’s Brazilian business, based in Brasilia. Prior to becoming CFO, he served as the group’s head of business evaluation, developing and appraising new business and large capital projects.

Accounting qualifications
But there is no mention of finance work or accounting qualifications. Elliott is one of a handful of FTSE-100 CFOs who is not a qualified accountant and has not come up through the finance function. On this, he is vocal and defensive.

“I don’t want to beat a drum on the subject, but there are several types of CFO,” he says. “I don’t pretend to be a great expert on the minutiae of accounting standards, but I don’t feel at a disadvantage not being an accountant, either. I would even say that my background in marketing, in operations management, in strategy, helps me in the job. An accountant has a particular way of looking at things and I’ve picked up some of that – but my perspective is probably somewhat different.”

Coming through operations, while different, has proven powerful. “My time in Brazil was very important,” he says. “Motivating people in a different language, a different culture, a different environment, a different legal system and a different industrial relations system was very challenging.”

And humbling. “I had spent years sitting at the centre criticising other people’s projects,” he says. “Here I had to do it myself. I quickly realised that what these guys in operations and business units had to do was a very difficult thing. I came back from Brazil with a bit more humility and experience which, I think, helped legitimise a non-accountant’s accession CFO.”

Back to China. How does the relationship issue impact Elliott’s job as CFO? “A quarter of our revenues are from China and its influence on the other three quarters is profound,” he says. “For all sorts of reasons, we’ve got to stabilise the relationship. But I would dare to say that it’s important to China that we have a proper and harmonious trading relationship.”

After our interview, we walk past a large poster in Rio’s London office sporting a large, baffling, Chinese-language diagram of interconnecting boxes: 50 or 60 headshots of men in identical shirts and ties peer out from the end of each line. It could be a glimpse into Rio’s future: a reminder of who’s boss, and the rules of engagement that Elliott must play by.