It would have been beneficial for there to have been a bit more description in the announcement, so to alleviate all the speculative assumptions by concerned shareholders again finding themselves stuck in suspension, stock media outlets with their microscopes now focussed intently on LLL, plus the resident non-holders here purely to cause a stir.
At the end of the day, the project itself is still scheduled to be one of the Top 5 Lithium projects worldwide, and fair enough, the Mali Govt want their piece of the pie of income from a new and growing international export material. The conference call from a few weeks ago did seem to suggest that the majority of the established code would remain, with a few tweaks of minor issues to be adjusted, of which the board felt were able to be achieved.
Rick Crabb, who was speaking in the conference call, has been involved in mining and related environmental and fiscal laws in Africa previously, this where he now needs to bring this experience out of his back pocket and onto the table.
As Red Baron alluded to in his post above, if the Govt were to gain 35% of the project, with only 10% free carried, the remaining 25% would need to be paid for at market price, where the amount payable vs. project valuation vs. taxes etc doesn't seem to make it a hugely viable option for the Govt.
As the suspended stock is unable to be traded anyway, a little bit more info on the particular issue would have hosed down a lot of the unnecessary speculative assumptions that will be floating around for the next 2 weeks.
(20min delay)