In its heyday during the commodities supercycle of the early 2000s, Red Kite managed about $3.5 billion and was responsible for supplying about 15% of the copper China was consuming.
Freeport agreed to build a copper smelter in Indonesia within five years of closing a deal last December with the Indonesian government on the operatorship of the giant Grasberg copper mine.
According to a paper in Resources Policy, such compensation packages actively encourage managers to cut costs and increase production regardless of the risks associated with those decisions.
