"Rio Tinto with low-cost operations focused on the Chinese markets, which to some extent...are somewhat insulated from the global financial system, is less exposed than others at this time," he said on the sidelines of an environmental congress.

"We have some of the lowest cost iron ore mines in the world, some of the lowest cost copper mines, some of the lowest cost aluminium production in the world," he said.

"On a comparison with our peers basis, we actually generally do better on total shareholder return during difficult times than during buoyant times," he said.

He reiterated hostility to the all-share takeover bid by BHP. "It doesn't come close to valuing Rio Tinto. Rio Tinto's businesses are quite robust," he said.

He said he was pleased that the United States had worked out a financial bailout package. Greater stability "would improve the economic prospects of the mining sector and a whole range of other sectors," he said.

"The focus right now is on the banking sector, as is should be, but there are no industries that would be immune," he said.

He also expressed confidence Rio would reach a goal of $US10 billion of disposals of assets this year to help pay $US40 billion in debt to finance its purchase of aluminium maker Alcan.

"We continue to work within each of our disposal programmes. We continue to target $US10 billion of announced transactions in 2008," he said.

He declined to discuss possible prices of units that might be sold, such as Alcan Packaging or coal unit Energy America.

Asked if it might be harder to sell at a good price because of market turmoil, he said that prices Rio got for past sales totalling $US3 billion were "in excess of what people would have expected."

"Rio Tinto is in a strong cash generative mode right now, in the first half we were generating about $US1.5 billion per month in cash flow from operations," he added.