We are no closer to the mystery of why Judy Baker was “terminated.”
The verb, not my choice, was employed recently in Canada Lithium’s (TSX: V.CLQ, Stock Forum) notice to investors about the former CEO’s sacking.
We continue, briefly albeit, with this story as it demonstrates how swiftly the curtain drops on any executive who lacks boardroom votes. Even if that executive is among just a handful of other women, primarily geologists, who can take credit for locating and securing potent properties. In Judy Baker’s case, it is the Quebec Lithium Project.
Judy in her roughly half-year at the scrappy little lithium wanna-be managed to boost the CLQ stock price, raise $3 million and seal a pact with a Japanese trading house for tests on lithium concentrate -- for use in rechargeable battery packs. (Please:See first half of the Canada Lithium story.)
Ms. Baker declines to tell me and her shareholders (she still sits on the board of directors) why she was “terminated” and replaced. “I would love to talk to you. Unfortunately I am not supposed to talk to anyone right now. We are all working to resolve situation in the best interest of CLQ,” she says.
New CEO and President Kerry Knoll says the events leading up to the firing were so rapid, that the company switched lawyers on the matter just before hitting the jettison button. “I personally would have used a different word,” he tells me. “Some lawyer told them to use it.”
Knoll, 53, owns up to about 25 years working with gold, copper and lithium companies. He declined to state the exact reason why Judy was dispatched with no thanks from the board. “That’s between the board and her,” he says.
As circumstances would have it, Kerry left the board of Canada Lithium earlier this year. Now he is back on it. “I wasn’t that happy when I was on the board before,” was all Mr. Knoll says about that span. Both Mr. Knoll and Ms. Baker remain large shareholders in the tiny company.
The stakes for lithium explorers are high these days. Ditto for any miner looking to gain entry into specialty metals such as molybdenum, tantalum, rhenium, cobalt and niobium. They’re all obscure metals with properties that fit the needs of electronic capacitors (absorbing and releasing electricity), stylized metals alloys for power plants, digital gadgetry and high-performance engines.
“After silver and its dozens and dozens of rather startling uses, like in deodorants and elasto-plasts, clothing and hospital counters, you get your miners’ metals that are starting to become components of some spectacular technologies,” says Robert Archer, Canadian CEO of a Mexico silver company, Great Panther Silver (TSX: T.GPR, Stock Forum).
I own Great Panther shares for the industrial promise of silver and for its monetary history. So I shared a cuppa with someone else in director/CEO-land with whom I have no promise or hope of gain and glory.
David Hodge is president of Commerce Resources Corp. (TSX: V.CCE, Stock Forum). Two years ago, David exercised neat timing by raising $32 million Canadian for Commerce Resources at a price that is more than double what the shares sell for today.
“You look at the supply and demand equations for all of the rare metals and they are so tortured,” the 56-year-old Hodge tells me as we linger at a streetside Vancouver café. “The tantalum customers, first off, are continually freaked out by mine closures, like in Australia (Talison) or Egypt. Or the treatment of workers, kids really, in the DRC (Congo). Or the fact that one or two Swiss or Denver or London firms dominate the distribution and the prices.”
Chart 1
Prices? There is no spot price for many of the specialty metals, as Hodge will tell you. The Japanese and the Chinese and even emerging manufacturers of consumer technologies in Peru, Brazil and India are starting to line up future sources of tantalum and niobium, Mr. Hodge says.
“What choice do they have? Tantalum is the best corrosive resistant metal that functions superbly as an electronic capacitor,” he says. Commerce Resources, whose shares I do not own, is putting out some of the best literature I have seen about rare elements. This link, for example, is a Q and A assembled by a German newsletter and informed by Mr. Hodge. The interview easily could become part of an Economics of Geology curriculum at any of the leading School of Mines in Colorado, Quebec, Arizona, Ontario or British Columbia.
Now, I beg you: please do not ask me how I started with Judy Baker and lithium and am closing with Mr. Hodge’s tantalum (in British Columbia). The jolly looking Mr. Hodge is a polar bear of a white-haired man who is all business – even if he has no academic pedigree to speak of. If he has one habit that bothers me, it is how he stares at his wristwatch every minute or two.
Ms. Baker, age 44 or so and a trained geologist, reminds me of a rifle-toting Annie Oakley who likes her bacon and eggs and hash browns in heaps … and maybe even a shot of bourbon in her coffee once in a great while.
So there it is.
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THOM CALANDRA of Ticker Traxhelps his audience find value in a quagmire of investment choices. Thom co-founded CBS MarketWatch andMarketWatch.com. As the voice of Thom Calandra's StockWatch and The Calandra Report, Thom pegged $300-ounce gold as a long-term hold.
HOLDINGS: Thom’s holdings are listed for all Stockhouse members on www.Stockhouse.com under the “portfolio setting” for user TCALANDRA. It is public and free to view. He and his family own recently minted gold and silver coins. He does not own and has never owned Canada Lithium Corp. or Commerce Resources.
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