China’s Tianqi Lithium has appealed Chile’s financial regulator to reconsider its decision about the SQM-Codelco lithium deal not needing shareholder approval, the Financial Market Commission confirmed on Friday.
Earlier this month, the CMF stated that a proposed lithium joint venture between state-run Codelco and miner SQM would not need to face a vote by SQM shareholders as argued by Tianqi, which owns a fifth of SQM.
“TLC Investments (Tianqi) filed an appeal for reconsideration in relation to the CMF’s pronouncement. The CMF has a period of 15 administrative working days to issue a decision on the matter,” the commission said.
The information had been reported hours earlier by the local newspaper La Tercera.
The Codelco-SQM agreement is a major plank of the Chilean government’s aim to take a stronger role in lithium output, in a country that has only two producers, SQM and US-based Albemarle.
Chile is the world’s second-largest producer of the metal used in batteries for electric vehicles.
(By Fabian Cambero and Natalia Siniawski; Editing by Gabriel Araujo)
