Tianqi Lithium CEO Frank Ha insists that the pact must be voted on by shareholders, and warns that he will not hesitate to take legal action.
Frank Ha, CEO of Tianqi Lithium, expressed his concern about the eventual pact with the National Copper Corporation of Chile (Codelco) that SQM intends to finalize, where the Chinese firm owns 22.16% of the property.
The controversy centers on a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that was made public on December 27 of last year, in which Codelco and SQM defined a partnership to exploit the Salar de Atacama.
Tianqi has insisted that this operation be seen and voted on at an extraordinary shareholders meeting. However, Gonzalo Guerrero, president of SQM, has been against this initiative.
The discussion has been escalating in recent weeks. Tianqi referred in a statement published by La Segunda to the result of the last extraordinary shareholders' meeting held on April 24, and to SQM's refusal to submit the agreement to a vote of all shareholders.
Ha commented that from Tianqi, they observe with great concern and also curiosity SQM's insistence on not wanting to call a shareholders' meeting to vote on the agreement with Codelco.
They activate defense for shareholder rights
Experts, such as the Public Law lawyer, Juan Francisco Sánchez, suggested to the aforementioned media that SQM structured the operation in a different way than what was announced in the MoU of December 27 to avoid the approval of the shareholders' meeting.
But Ha questions this logic and suggests that the intention behind this decision may be to harm shareholder rights. He stated that they are “evaluating all available options to ensure that the interests and rights as minority shareholders are properly protected.”
Ha also mentioned that there are those who have been spreading a conspiracy theory that questions Tianqi's intentions, but clarified that their goal is very simple: “to protect their normal rights as shareholders.”
The CEO of Tianqi Lithium added that if the agreement is signed without respecting all the rules that bind each of the parties to the agreement, they will not hesitate to take legal action.
For its part, through a statement sent, SQM argues that it has already consulted the Financial Market Commission (CMF) regarding whether or not the agreement required an extraordinary meeting, to which, the company says, the regulator would have responded. that was not necessary.
