About

Reporting to group general counsel Philip Richards in London, the Australian contingent of the dual-headquartered Rio Tinto legal team is well stocked with top legal talent. The company is vast, reporting $33.7bn USD in revenue for 2016 on the back of its metal and mining extraction and refinement operations. Legal operations at Rio Tinto are split by key business units, and Australia is the base for a number of general counsel who are in charge of each of these. Neville Henwood, for instance, is general counsel for copper and coal and has attained almost a decade of service with the company, working out of Canada, the United States and Australia during the course of his tenure, previously being chief counsel for global business services. Michelle Tilley also boasts a large amount of experience with the company, having been with Rio Tinto since 2005, she has now risen to the rank of general counsel for the energy division. In addition to these high-profile legal operators, global privacy counsel Carolyn Lidgerwood is based in Melbourne, and has international responsibility for ensuring that data protection and privacy compliance is upheld group-wide, a role that includes liaising with senior management closely.