Rio Tinto defends Turquoise offer, says will ‘deliver value for all stakeholders’

Rio Tinto Plc on Tuesday said its offer to buy the 49% of Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd it does not already own for about $2.7 billion will “deliver value for all stakeholders” as it develops a massive copper and gold mining project in Mongolia.

The mining giant is facing rising pressure from Turquoise minority shareholders to boost the offer. “Rio Tinto is strongly committed to the long term success of Oyu Tolgoi and Mongolia,” Clayton Walker, Rio’s chief operating officer of copper, told the CRU-CESCO World Copper Conference in Santiago.