Incoming chairman Jan du Plessis should note that opposition to the Rio/Chinalco stitch-up is stiffening. In the UK, some shareholders are querying the simple majority vote that Rio needs to approve its “pioneering strategic partnership”. On the other side of the world, one senator is mounting a shrill television campaign to “keep Australia Australian”.

Neither development spells doom for the deal. But they do raise the pressure to come up with a plan B. Australia's Foreign Investment Review Board this week deferred its ruling until June, meaning that the Chinalco proposal will be put to Rio shareholders at the very end of the second quarter, at the earliest – uncomfortably close to October, when the first tranche of Alcan debt falls due.

In briefings to investors, Rio is still appealing to pragmatism. It is true that it has solved its refinancing problems in a way that circumvents troubled Western banks while avoiding capital calls on existing investors. In that sense, trampling over pre-emption rights, and adopting a very loose interpretation of the word “ordinary” – a “special” resolution requires 75 per cent of the votes – is perhaps excusable.