A senior Rio Tinto executive said on Tuesday that “any revision” to the miner’s planned $19.5bn tie-up with Chinalco, the Chinese aluminium group, would be decided after the completion of shareholder meetings over the next week.

The comments from Sam Walsh, the Anglo-Australian miner’s head of iron ore who was speaking on the sidelines of a mining conference in Canberra, came as Jan du Plessis, Rio’s new chairman flew to Australia to meet investors and government officials.