Ann: LKE Market Update, page-175

SOWEN Below is the section in the article on lake.


But the Lake Resources share price implosion was triggered on Monday by the shock announcement, just before the market opened, that managing director Steve Promnitz would quit the company and resign from the board.The following day Mr Promnitz is said to have sold 10.2 million shares netting an estimated $11.1 million, having already disposed of $7.5 million worth of shares since October 2020.In a late Thursday afternoon announcement, Lake Resources said Mr Promnitz’s resignation was “of his own volition”, and reassured shareholders that “nothing has changed” regarding the company’s desire to progress its lithium projects in Argentina.But Mr Promnitz said he was “shocked” when the board told him on May 31 that it wanted his help to transition the company to a new CEO. His position became “untenable” so he tendered his resignation on June 17, he said in a statement.Mr Promnitz said it was “common and standard practice” for exiting CEOs to “immediately sell their stock positions regardless of what they think about the company and its assets”.But the sharp collapse has left retail shareholders nursing large losses and raised questions about the credibility of the S&P/ASX 200. The sharemarket index is considered by the corporate regulator as one of the market benchmarks of “potential systemic importance”. He still “clearly believes” in the company’s future “having positioned it well for construction and production”.