International Owners of Alkane Shares and the Demerger

In response to the question from "eolaherb" which was:

"iamwhatiam" As an Australian living in America, holding ALKEF OTC shares, what is your view on the demerger, and not being able to participate? Hopefully, somehow you've been able to find a work around. Your views/thoughts would be appreciated.

My thoughts:

Obviously bummed that we won't get to automatically keep the shares in ASM. Like many, I got into Alkane years ago for the rare earths play, and I still want to participate in that. After some digging around and verifying that if I want to own shares in ASM I'll need the ability to purchase ASM (or whatever the ticker will be) on the ASX from here in the states, so I opened a trading account where I can do that, specifically an "IBKR Lite" account with " InteractiveBrokers" See web address below. The IBKR Lite is basically the simplest trading platform they have with zero account fees, no account minimums, and according to their description and example, trades cost 0.08%, that is, eight one hundredths of one percent of the dollar value of the trade. But they do have a minimum fee of $6 U.S. per trade. So, a $20,000 dollar purchase would cost $16 in commissions. Not too bad for access to a foreign market, in my opinion. I plan to start purchasing shares in ASM on the ASX as soon as they are available, which I'm assuming will be before I get my cash from my 1 share per 5 ALK shares.

I hope you find this helpful. It is far from ideal, but I don't currently see a way around it. I have lots of family in Australia and I thought about asking them to open an account for me and I'd wire them the money, but then I learned about InteractiveBrokers and for me it's a simpler way to go.

All the best.

https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/home.php