I appreciate your comment, butch, and your insightful...

I appreciate your comment, butch, and your insightful contributions over many years. And, yes, I have voted against the proposed merger for a number of reasons. Here are several that I've not seen raised by other posters.

I don't think Pall Graves is up to developing a business: the last six years of underperformance by the Graves-led Livent is evidence enough of that. No doubt Graves has superbly managed the various Allkem players: for instance appealing to Peter Coleman's ego by offering him a corporate presence in New York, appealing to Martin Perez de Solay's obvious weariness with the opportunity for him to stay in Argentina with a golden handshake. That the key people at Allkem were willing to run the company dead since when the proposed merger was announced in May is testament to how successful Graves has been in manipulating those people (and an indictment on the lack of professionalism by the Allkem leadership during this process). Which either way the vote goes on the 19th should see the departure of the Allkem sell-outs so there is that silver lining I suppose.

I think the future of the merged company is mainly on the back of Allkem's assets, not Livent's assets. There was a time when Livent was the global leader of mid-stream lithium but the reality is that Livent has been swamped by the Chinese who now do it better and cheaper than Livent. And what the Chinese cannot do the Japanese and Koreans are starting to do (as in run mid-stream operations in US friendly jurisdictions). What the Chinese don't have is long life high grade low cost lithium production centres which is what Allkem has in spades. Given this I find it unacceptable that if the merger goes through Livent effectively controls the Board of the merged entity (Coleman has already proven himself to be a sell-out), effectively dominates the executive team of the merged company and that the merged company is not primarily trading on the ASX. As has been said by others, Allkem does not need Livent but Livent desperately needs Allkem.

Following on from my view that the future value of the merged company will be mainly in the Allkem assets I think Pall Graves and Livent shareholders are getting an absolute gift with the proposed 56:44 split. If Allkem management had not run dead on getting the approvals for the James Bay project Allkem would now have three major lithium projects under development: Olaroz 2, Sal de Vida and James Bay. I cannot think of another lithium player anywhere in the world currently bringing three major mining projects into production. In contrast Livent is treading water in developing its 50% investment in the Whabouchi project (which in any case is small compared to the James Bay project) and is treading water in expanding its brine project in Argentina. I'm against the merger but if there was to be a merger the split should be more 60:40 or 66:34.

Anyway, people still have time to vote so they should vote now and vote against the proposed merger.