TeeBee - thanks for the response. I agree that Pilbara has not...

TeeBee - thanks for the response. I agree that Pilbara has not stepped up to the m&a plate this year but in their defence they did nail Altura in 2021, which was a defining move. I half expected they would link with Patriot but Albemarle seems to have taken that dance card. Their home asset is tier one so I would not be keen to see them go after bits and pieces which does restrict their options.

A Pilbara Allkem match up makes sense to me, particularly as it would likely retain the high quality c-suite that Pilbara has assembled (in contrast to the opportunistic pommy banker scum that Livent has). That would address the lack of WA tier one presence for Allkem, would give Pilbara a tier one hardrock asset in North America, and would balance those hard rock assets with a strong tier one brine exposure in Argentina. Another failing of Martin MD and Allkem has been them not developing further the ties Allkem has with the world's biggest car maker, Toyota. Toyota has announced they are committing US$8b for battery production in the US and I think Dale Henderson's team would zero in on becoming the preferred supplier for Toyota (again, imagine if Martin MD had announced during 2023 a further tie-in to Toyota - the thought of a take over by Livent would have been more of a joke ... which is why Allkem has been running dead since May - Martin MD and the others are locked in to those golden handshakes).

Joe Lowry did address Livent's plans for Hombre Meurto. He actually used it as an example of how Livent never gets anything done and how Pall Graves is all mouth and no delivery. From memory he said that Livent has been talking for 10 years of so about Hombre Meurto but has made little progress. My understanding is that since 2018, when Pall Graves took over Livent as a free standing entity, he has not delivered a single major project. To Martin MD's credit in that time he has delivered the Advantage Lithium and Galaxy deals and seems to have finally sorted out the issues at Olaroz 1 and brought into production Olaroz 2. Given that Toyota Tsusho developed and is operating Naraha Martin MD can only claim credit for the deal on Naraha. But in a straight comparison Martin MD has totally dakked Pall Graves. Graves is attempting to do the fall-back wanker banker thing of buying success rather than building success.