Rio Tinto sees strong demand for share buyback

Mining giant Rio Tinto has completed a bigger-than-expected off-market share buyback due to strong demand.

The company, as part off its planned US$2bn capital return announced in February, repurchased 11.6m shares at a price of A$560m Australian dollars (US$431m).

This was higher than the A$500m (US$400m) initially indicated.

The buyback was made at a price of A$48.44 per share, a 14% discount to its trading price in Australia over the five days up to 2 April.

Rio, which had intended to buy back US$1.6bn-worth of shares through on-market repurchases this year, has now scaled this back to US$1.575bn.