Rio Tinto chief Tom Albanese fired over $14bn write-down, admitting 'accountability' Mr Albanese said: "While I leave the business in good shape in many respects, I fully recognise that accountability for all aspects of the business rests with the CEO. I am pleased that someone of Sam's calibre and values has been chosen to succeed me as chief executive. This is a great company and Sam will do an outstanding job. The FTSE 100 miner bought its Alcan aluminium arm in 2007 for $38bn, shortly before the markets crashed, a bad deal which Mr Albanese has previously acknowledged happened "on my watch." It has now written down a "staggering" $25bn of the price paid, noted analysts at Jefferies. Mr Albanese last February said he would not take an annual bonus as the company posted an $8.9bn write-down on the value of the aluminum assets. Rio then said in November that more write-downs were expected at its aluminium arm, as the metal's market continues to struggle with overcapacity and climbing costs. The company on Thursday blamed the further decline in market conditions seen last year, as well as high energy and raw material costs and strong currencies in some countries, for the latest write-downs, which were focused at Alcan. As for the $3bn Mozambique write-down, that reflected the bulk of the $4bn acquisition cost of Riversdale, its coal assets in the east of the African country. Rio Tinto said developing infrastructure around the coal assets has been more challenging that it anticipated, after it could not get approvals to transport coal by barge along the Zambezi River, and that it has also had to cut its estimates of the coking coal it can recover. In addition, the coal sector has seen the shale gas revolution in the US flood the market with natural gas, pushing down coal prices as a result and causing pain for the industry. Rio Tinto said it would also report around $500m of smaller asset write downs, with the final figures to be revealed in its full-year results on February 14. Charles Gibson, head of mining at Edison Investment Research, said "When a company writes off the equivalent of approaching one sixth of its market capitalisation, the CEO has to carry the can. Rio was however until today one of the more stable miners - investors may wonder what else is out there in the sector. The shares dived more than 4pc following this morning's surprise announcement, but later recovered some of their losses to trade down by around 1.7pc at £34.00p. Kate Craig, an analyst at Liberum Capital, said the market knew more write-downs were coming and that they were "not incommensurate" with its own valuation of the assets. "Rio appears to be taking the front foot on write-downs and appears to have been more proactive on culpability than Anglo [American] - launching management changes and cost cutting before the market has asked for it," she said. Sam Walsh is the logical replacement for Albanese and has a strong operational heritage and may be more focussed on iron ore growth, which the market will like. Taking over as chief executive, Mr Walsh will see his potential remuneration package increase by 15pc to Australian $7.8m, with a base salary of Australian $1.9m. Mr Albanese and Mr Ritchie will not receive bonuses on departure, including outstanding bonus share entitlements earned in previous years. Mr Albanese's departure makes him the latest in a line of exiting mining chief executives as the commodity price boom wanes. Cynthia Carroll is leaving Anglo American, while BHP Billiton is working to find a successor to Marius Kloppers. Mick Davis at Xstrata is also departing, although that is because the company is merging with commodity trading giant Glencore.