Trading on Rio Tinto's (ASX: RIO) stock opened on Friday at $64.50, a 1.45 per cent drop from Thursday's closing price of $65.55, indicating the minimal impact of the Thursday night announcement of Tom Albanese's departure as chief executive of the mining company.

While the news sent shock waves in Australia and the global financial community, industry observers agree that the development would spook the market but only in the short-term.

Analysts pointed to the naming of Sam Walsh as Mr Albanese's replacement as the stabilizing factor expected to bring back confidence on Rio, Australia's second-largest miner.

"We would expect Sam Walsh to essentially carry forward with the current strategy, with a doubling down on disciplined capital allocation and growth only in the most attractive assets like the Pilbara," The Wall Street Journal quoted Jeff Largey, mining analyst of Macquarie Research.

Jefferies International retained its buy recommendation for Rio's stocks despite the unexpected change in leadership.

"The company remains on track to delivery significant volume growth in the medium term . . . and combined with declining capex should lead to growing free cash flow even as the iron ore price falls," added Chris LaFemina, mining analyst of Jefferies.

He pointed out that Rio would benefit from its production expansion and lower cost. Just before Mr Albanese was shown the exit door over the $14-billion write-down of Rio's aluminium assets, he announced a boost in production target of iron ore to 360 tonnes by mid-2015 and cuts in cost, including axing of jobs in coal mines, unaware that his job was also on the chopping block.

"I imagine there's going to be at least an interim impact on the share price. That's probably going to be negative because the market just wasn't expecting it," ABC quoted MineLife analyst Gavin Wendt.

"And when the market gets these sorts of occurrences it doesn't tend to reflect too well on companies. So I'm sure there's gonna be a near-term hit," he added.

While Mr Albanese, 55, who leaves Rio in July, will take lump-sum payments, he will forfeit bonuses on departure including outstanding share entitlements he earned in previous years.

Since he became CEO in May 2007, Mr Albanese is estimated to have earned almost $17.6 million in salary and his unexercised share options from 2003 to 2009 are worth almost the same amount.

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