Bid speculation about Arcadium in The Australian, see link, page-154

Here's a totally useless angle if Rio Tinto were to acquire Arcadium: we've sort of been in this territory before. Back a few years ago a previous incarnation of Arcadium managed to acquire part of Rio Tinto! (as I said, useless)

Rio Tinto used to own some borate operations in Argentina which were so marginal and immaterial to said gorilla that Rio was about to simply close them down. It would have meant that several hundred workers in one of the poorest part of the country would be thrown out of a job with no realistic chance of finding anything else. So in steps a small outfit from Brisbane called Orocobre which had hopes of building a lithium brine facility in the back blocks of Argentina not that far from the borate activity. At that time the idea of building such a lithium brine facility was outrageous: no one anywhere in the world had tried to build a brine facility in the last couple of decades. And to be fair the lads from Orocobre knew as much about borate as they knew about lithium brine (in other words, not much). Mainly as a means of showing goodwill to the local people Orocobre bought the borate operations off Rio Tinto and kept them going for a few years. In the end they swapped those operations for some more brine holdings in the Olaroz salar. I think this happened during the last lithium price crash when they also acquired Advantage Lithium and its share of some tenements at the neighbouring Cauchari salar (always eyes on the prize from Orocobre, always - unlike Arcadium which I think has allowed itself to become a target by going all passive and defensive).

Anyway, I suspect that the pommy in charge of Arcadium will fold like a cheap suit and we will become a unit in Rio soon enough. Maybe Albemarle might think of having a crack at outbidding Rio. None of the Chinese players would even think of it. Has anyone heard of any other potential bidders?