MinRes votes againstIGO’s bid for Essential Metals, scheme...

MinRes votes againstIGO’s bid for Essential Metals, scheme fails

Chris Ellison’s Mineral Resources hasvoted its 19.55 per cent stake against IGO and Tianqi’s 50¢ a share bid forlithium junior Essential Metals, flattening out the scheme vote.

Mineral Resourcesboss Chris Ellison.

Proxies were 55.8 per cent for the bidand 42.5 per cent against it heading into the meeting.

MinRes revealed a 19.55 per cent stakein lithium play Essential Metals late on Friday, less than a week before thescheme vote for IGO and Tianqi’s 50c bid on Thursday morning.

Its late arrival on Essential’sregister sparked speculation if it would use its shareholding to block IGO andTianqi’s bid and launch a counter bid of its own.

Hedge funds have been in and out ofthe stock since IGO and Tianqi lobbed their bid in early January – but acounter bidder has failed to materialise.

MinRes now owns a healthy pre-bidstake and has shown it didn’t like IGO’s bid.

However, it hasn’t lobbed a bid of its own even though thetarget board baked in a fiduciary out into their no talk/no shop agreement withIGO and would have been free to engage with MinRes had it turned up a morecompelling bid than IGO’s even before the scheme meeting.