https://ardina.news/article/2017_12_15_773039973_ceo-da-novo-litio-demite-se
jornaldenegocios.pt - December 15 13:25
CEO of New Lithium resigned
David Frances leaves the post of chief executive and general director, but will remain as consultant to the Australian company. The exit takes place in full legal battle with Lusorecursos.
The executive president of New Lithium, the Australian company involved in the prospection of lithium in the north of the country and that in recent months was in dispute with the Portuguese company Lusorecursos, resigned from the position.
The resignation was announced this Friday, December 15,
in a statement from the company to the Australian stock exchange . According to the document, despite the exit - which the company says is related to "personal reasons" - David Frances (in the photo) will continue to work with New Lithium from Australia as "adviser" of the company and will follow the ongoing legal proceedings , which involve the ownership of Sepeda's licenses, Montalegre.
Prior to joining Dakota Minerals, the company that predated New Lithium, Frances spent seven years at Mawson West, a copper company in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In place of Frances - who had been in the company's leadership for almost two years since December 24, 2015 - Francis Wedin, who until now is executive director of the company, will be the company's director-general. New Lithium shares closed this Friday, down 1.92% to A $ 0.051.
War in progress in court
The changes at the New Lithium summit come less than two weeks after the company suffered a legal setback involving ownership of the lithium prospecting rights in Montalegre, where the company said it identified "the largest lithium resource in a lithium deposit -cissio-tantalum in pegmatite in Europe, "a material which was later considered suitable for the production of lithium-ion battery components.
The court in Braga extinguished a precautionary measure by the Australian on 4 December, claiming the legitimacy to apply for the license to operate in that locality, invoking a contract signed with Lusorecursos in June 2016 and the "inaction" of the Portuguese firm to transfer to the the prospecting license.
As Lusorecursos - which had signed the original prospecting contract with the State in December 2012 - had already applied for the exploration license on its behalf and within the deadline (ending on 7 December of this year), the court held that of the New Lithium injunction
ceased to make sense and extinguished the request .
Immediately the Australian company has filed lawsuits to "protect its right over the asset through a phased legal strategy while it initiates the main lawsuit." And he announced that he
would request, on his behalf, the license for exploration in Sepeda .
Already this Thursday,
in a note to its investors, the company anticipated that legal proceedings initiated after the lead of the injunction may take "several months to resolve and that the main proceedings may take several years."
Discomfort of the main shareholder
Even before that, on 28 November, the General Assembly of New Lithium was marked by the discomfort manifested by Slipstream, then the company's largest shareholder, for the time allegedly spent by David Frances and Francis Wedin on another cobalt prospecting project Norway and Sweden.
At Business, New Lithium source confirmed at the end of November that a trading company, in partnership with Frances and Wedin, "was involved in preliminary cobalt prospecting", but assured that the two managers "did not carry out any prospecting work or evaluation in these projects. "
These prospecting assets were eventually proposed for purchase from New Lithium, but John Daniel Fitzgerald (chairman) and Dudley Kingsnorth (non-executive director) opposed the acquisition because they "do not fit into the strategic plan of society." The assets were eventually sold to a Canadian listed.
"The discomfort of the Slipstream shareholder in this matter seems to be influenced by other factors, namely the fact that Slipstream competes with NLI for obtaining prospecting licenses in Portugal," the same source told the Business at the time.
Three days after the general meeting, New Lithium's largest shareholder, Slipstream Resources Investments,
reduced its position in the company to less than half (from 9.78% to 4.57%), with the sale of 18.5% millions of titles.
Slipstream itself entered into a partnership with Savannah Resources in Portugal in May this year, selling Slipstream a 75% majority stake in Slipstream Investments, the company holding the rights to exploit quartz, feldspar and lithium at Barroso Mine, municipality of Boticas, Trás-os-Montes. A few kilometers from where Sepeda is located, the disputed position between New Lithium and Lusorecursos.
Another point of dissent at the general meeting was the company's remuneration report (which lists the salaries and bonuses of directors),
which was approved with 25% of the votes against - according to the New Lithium communiqué - which is called "first strike" by Australian stock exchange rules. A "second strike" may trigger a vote of confidence in the administration.
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