Albanese is chief executive officer of Rio Tinto, a pure miner with no petroleum investments and horribly expensive exposure to the aluminium industry.
Yeager is boss of BHP Billiton Petroleum, a pure oil and gas business and horribly expensive exposure to the shale gas industry.
Obviously, there is a world of difference between aluminium and gas but not through financial eyes and not when you eliminate the time factor which is the other big difference between what happened last week to Albanese and what appears to be awaiting Yeager.
Write-offs, which are accountants' code for flushing corporate cash into the public sewer, is what hit Albanese last week when Rio Tinto knocked another $US8.9 billion off the value of its aluminium division, primarily the Alcan business acquired for $38 billion (in cash) in 2007.
In total, Rio Tinto has now flushed away $18 billion of the cash paid for Alcan, with the latest loss also consuming Albanese's bonus for the year and knocking a huge hole in the reported profit of Rio Tinto.
Where Albanese and Rio Tinto have just been, Yeager and BHP Billiton might soon go because the fate of the $20 billion sunk into acquiring shale gas acreage over the past year is remarkably similar to Rio Tinto's great aluminium cash flush.
Time might heal the shale gas wound which is opening in the side of BHPB Petroleum but the clock is ticking with a write-off inevitable by this time next year, if not sooner should the auditors have sharp pencils.
What's happening to BHP Billiton's shale gas investment is pretty much what The Slug suggested might happen early last month and other observers, including Peter Strachan from StockAnalysis, had suggested in their writing.
In essence, the sharp fall in the US gas price has rendered unprofitable a large volume of gas production.
There is so much gas available in the US that wells are being capped, drilling rigs idled and the value of acreage starting to fall.
This is not what Yeager expected when he got the green light from the BHP Billiton board to pay $4.75 billion for the Arkansas acreage of Chesapeake Energy and $15 billion for Petrohawk Energy and its assets in Texas and Louisiana.
And it will certainly have come as an even bigger surprise to the directors of BHP Billiton who have been stung by a sudden outbreak of "burning pocket" syndrome - the painful affliction caused by surplus cash catching fire in your trousers.
Back in 2007, Albanese was riding high on the strength of Chinese demand for iron ore, copper, coal and the other minerals produced by Rio Tinto.
The cash mountain accumulating in the company's coffers represented an irresistible temptation to buy something, anything.
What better, thought the Rio Tinto board on the recommendation of CEO Albanese, than to dramatically expand the company's aluminium division by tossing a fistful of cash at the existing shareholders of Alcan - who were delighted to accept.
Amazingly, given BHP Billiton's history of loss-making deals through the rich years of the 1990s, its board looked at its own pile of cash last year and accepted the advice of Yeager that now was the perfect time to get big in US gas.
No one has yet suggested a big shale gas write-off looms for BHP Billiton but there are certainly critics doing what The Slug suggested in his January 3 column on "the great gas price crash".
The opening words of that contribution deserve repeating:
- "No one has yet been so rude as to suggest that BHP Billiton has made the mother of all investment mistakes with its $20 billion plunge into US shale gas ... but that doesn't stop a deeply cynical observer from imagining that he's watching the start of a re-run of events which dogged the world's biggest resources company back in the 1990s."
They are being rude now, because within hours of BHP Billiton last week filing its financial report for the half year to December 31, the quills were being sharpened and the calls being made for an explanation as to what had happened to the original $20 billion invested and how much more would be committed to the shale gas operation.
Yeager's boss and BHP Billiton CEO Marius Kloppers conceded the plan had changed to one of prioritising development of liquids-rich shale but he refused to say how much capital would be committed to the new plan.
Both men, Yeager and Kloppers, got off lightly last week, perhaps because it's too early to describe the shale gas plunge as a disaster in the same league as Rio Tinto's aluminium plunge.
But if you happen to be walking past the BHP Billiton boardroom over the next six months keep an ear open for the tick-tock of the shale gas clock.
