Ann: Binding Transaction Implementation Deed with SQM, page-295

Just reported in AFR. Seems Gina has 15.4% and not much more to buy to get to 19.9% which is a key point for SQM bid - ie the SQM bid is likely dead tomorrow. If not the FIRB may kill the deal.

“By Thursday afternoon, Mrs Rinehart was understood to control 15.4 per cent of Azure’s shares. The stock rocketed 43 per cent higher to $3.49 after about 80 million shares changed hands on Thursday.”

”Still, SQM isn’t just facing a potentially uneven grip on Azure. The federal government’s Foreign Investment Review Board could also pose a problem for the transaction.

Tianqi Lithium, China’s biggest producer of lithium, owns a 23 per cent stake in the Chilean giant, according to SQM’s company filings of April 11, 2022.

FIRB has barred a series of lithium deals linked to Chinese money this year, including a takeover Alita Resources – the owner of the Bald Hill lithium mine – by a China-linked company.

Tianqi already owns a 26 per cent stake in WA’s Greenbushes lithium mine, which boasts the highest grade and largest spodumene deposit in the world. The US battery chemical giant Albemarle owns the remaining stake.

But that investment was made in 2014, before an escalating tit-for-tat trade war between China and the US and its allies that spans semiconductors to raw materials kicked off under former US President Donald Trump.

Resources Minister Madeleine King vowed this year that only “like-minded” foreign investors would be welcome in Australia’s critical minerals sector, a comment that has been widely understood to preclude Chinese investment

FIRB may also run the ruler over another SQM shareholder, the former son-in-law of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Billionaire Julio Ponce Lerou, known as the lithium king, leads a shareholder group which owns a 25 per cent stake in SQM, the world’s No. 2 lithium miner.”