Company: SQM
Filing Date: 2025-04-24
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0000909037-25-000020
Chunk: 15

Company: CHEMICAL & MINING CO OF CHILE INC
Filing Date: 2025-04-24
Form: 20-F
Item: Item 3
Chunk 15
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 shares of SQM.
The divestiture by the Pampa Group or Tianqi, or potential changes in the circumstances that have led to the determination of the CMF that there is currently no controlling shareholder of the Company, or a combination thereof, may have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Tianqi is a significant shareholder and a competitor of the Company, which could result in risks to free competition
Tianqi is a competitor in the lithium business, and as a result of the number of SQM shares that it owns, it has the right to choose up to three Board members. Under Chilean law, we are restricted in our ability to decline to provide information about us, which may include competitively sensitive information, to a director of our company. On August 27, 2018, Tianqi and the Chilean antitrust regulator, the Chilean National Economic Prosecutor’s Office (Fiscalía Nacional Económica), or FNE, entered into an extrajudicial agreement, under which certain restrictive measures were implemented in order to (i) maintain the competitive conditions of the lithium market, (ii) mitigate the risks described in the agreement and (iii) limit Tianqi’s access to certain information of the Company and its subsidiaries, which is defined as “sensitive information” under the agreement.
During the approval process of the extrajudicial agreement before the FNE, we expressed our concerns regarding the measures contained in the extrajudicial agreement since, in the Company’s opinion, the measures (i) could not effectively resolve the risks that Tianqi and the FNE have sought to mitigate, (ii) are not sufficient to avoid access to our “sensitive 
information” that, in the possession of a competitor, could harm us and the proper functioning of the market and (iii) could contradict the Chilean Corporations Act.
During 2024, Tianqi filed a lawsuit challenging the CMF's decision that shareholder approval would not be required in connection with the formation of the new entity between SQM and Codelco. Following several lower court decisions rejecting Tianqi's claims, Tianqi filed an appeal with the Chilean Supreme Court, which rejected Tianqi's appeal. 
The presence of a shareholder which is at the same time a competitor of ours and the right of this competitor to choose Board members could generate risks to free competition and/or increase the risks of an investigation of free competition against us, whether in Chile or in other countries, all of