US aluminum group Alcoa Inc. (Alcoa) has announced that the shares in Rio Tinto Plc owned by Alcoa and the state-owned mining company Aluminum Corporation of China (Chinalco) under a custodian agreement with Lehman Brothers International Europe - which collapsed in the current financial crisis - have been transferred to a new custodian acting on behalf of Shining Prospect, the special purpose vehicle used by the parties to purchase the Rio Tinto Plc shares in question.
As previously reported by SteelOrbis, Alcoa and Chinalco had acquired a 12 percent stake in Rio Tinto Plc early this year for a total consideration of $14.1 billion in a move widely seen as an attempt to block or complicate the BHP Billiton bid.