I need to be careful where I go here but I do wish to raise...

I need to be careful where I go here but I do wish to raise something I consider is salient in the decision for Livent to effectively take over Allkem.

On 10 February this year Allkem announced that Allkem's, and before that Orocobre's, long term Chief Financial Officer, Neil Kaplan, had passed away after a short illness.

Martín Pérez de Solay is attributed with saying: “Neil was an outstanding Chief Financial Officer, originally forOrocobre Limited and subsequently for Allkem. In his more than 10 years of service to the Companyhe was a respected leader and valued colleague who played a key role in every significant initiativeundertaken by the Company, including the merger between Orocobre and Galaxy in 2021. We will allmiss Neil greatly and wish to express our sincere condolences to his wife and family."

Now I didn't know Mr Kaplan personally but as a holder of Orocobre since 2008 (ore thereabouts) I had gained the impression that he was one of the forces for good in the company. My guess is that his unexpected passing rattled his colleagues and perhaps caused a reassessment of people's work life priorities.

And then along came Paul Graves and Livent with a proposition that addresses that very conundrum: are the Allkem executives up for more years of fighting to get numerous major projects - Oloraz 2, James Bay, Sal de Vida - up and running or would it be better for them personally to effectively take a stash of cash and honourably step away. Now my assessment of the likes of Goldman Sachs executives is that they would sell his own daughters if they could turn a dollar so it would not surprise me if Mr Graves saw this sad event as an opening to screw over Allkem and its shareholders and so he pounced, with the proposed merger deal announced in May, just three months after Mr Kaplan's death.

A number of posters have questioned how Livent is able to put in place in the merged entity pretty much its own team and have noted that the existing Allkem team are doing well by taking the money and running. I have come to the view that those posters are on point.

I also raise two curious decisions by Allkem executives and Board. Much as I detest the bureaucracy of the Committee in COMEX Quebec that is assessing Allkem's environmental and social application for the James Bay project I do note that the committee has been quite explicit that Allkem has been dragging its feet this year in meeting its obligations regarding the application: at one point in the minutes of a COMEX meeting it was noted that after several months Allkem had not yet begun consulting with Cree communities as COMEX had asked them to. COMEX made a valid point that they cannot progress the application if the applicant is simply not actioning directions COMEX is giving. And again in its annual report COMEX highlighted the inadequate responses of companies with current applications with the committee (and the major current application is Allkem's James Bay project so join the dots).

How more stark the difference between Allkem's growing portfolio of projects and Livent' stagnant portfolio than for James Bay to become fully permitted before the vote. But clearly Allkem has dragged its feet here and so we go to the vote with the ongoing uncertainty around the project.

And the second point is Peter Coleman's bizarre and frankly perverse decision to hold the Allkem vote three working days before Christmas. If you wanted to kill reasonable consideration of the proposition and ensure you minimised the turnout for the vote then you would schedule that vote for exactly when Coleman did. The vote has been six months in the making and they could not schedule it for early December? Pathetic! A total dog act by Mr Coleman but hey the bloke ends up hanging out in New York with all the other big dicks so who is winning and who is losing?

Even before the merger announcement in May I had thought there was some sense in a tie-up between Allkem and Livent. But what has unfolded is a total rogering of Allkem shareholders, with effective control of the merged company being handed over to an underperforming investment banker scumbag.

So I strongly encourage all AKE holders to.

VOTE, VOTE NOW,

and if you share similar concerns to mine VOTE AGAINST THE MERGER