Banter and General Comments, page-12

*True Story

Put on my pink shirt, slicked back my hair, did a line on the secretary’s desk,
put on my shiniest 1980s Asset Raider alligator shoes
and then walked into my local bank branch and asked for the manager.

Me : Hi Mr Bank Manager. I’d like to borrow one billion of your finest dollars, please. Australian style. Ta.
Mr Bank Manager : No. Goodbye.
Me : Ah. C'mon, mate.
Come back and sit back down.
This is the business deal of the year.
Have a cigar. Got a light?
Look, mate - you can have half back pretty much straight away and I'd only need the rest for 2 weeks and you can have 10% interest.
One Hun-dred M-i-ll-i-o-n, mate.
All yours.
Mr Bank Manager : OK. mmm. I'm listening. What's it for?
Me : It's a... what is it... ah yeah... A Lithium Company.
I'm not really that sure about what that is myself but ... ah.. who gives a rats about that stuff, hey?
The $500m back straight away is already in cash and “liquid assets”, if you know what I mean.
Then the remaining brine assets have an NPV of $1.4b USD.
I’ll let them go cheap at $1b AUD for a quick sale. Like a few days kind of quick.
Have a keen buyer all ready to go, who just bought ta nearby property and wants to put a hotel on it or something.
Or the Saudis who have a few spare bucks now that they’re not buying Tesla.
Or Albemarle. Or Tianqi. Or Ganfeng.
Or... ah hell... they're all loaded and all the big lithium boys are rolling big fat IPO scoobs at Elon’s place.
All the big money dudes are in the hot tub, the Stanley Brothers are playing some of the Blackest Rock you ever heard and their crowd will claw each other's eyes out to get these primo properties on their books.

That'd be you all paid back with your $100m interest for 2 weeks - and I have $400m profit for myself already.
Then I still have a producing hard rock mine in WA doing $200m per year and another tenement with a visible hill of spodumene not far from where CATL are setting up in Quebec.
I'll sell the pair for a quick $1b and I’m up $1.4b.
That should be enough for a small private island and a lithium powered ride on mower to keep the weeds down.
If I wanted to hang around a little longer I could probably pick up another easy $500m-1b for the right buyer,
and collecting more of the profits from the producing mine for some walk-around money.
But - mate - I'm sure you'd agree - a quick game is a good game.
Whatdyareckon, Mr Bank Manager?
Mr Bank Manager : Yep. Looks good. Yep. OK. Lines on the secretary’s desk to celebrate?


*True as in AFR “Street Talk”