RE:So, Clulow was fired. SURPRISE !!Yes, all part of the underhanded deception!
Dibah42 wrote: My reaction: what took so long?
Mr. Money Bags with the Thomson fortune at his back arrived at a time when PLI was a faltering company with promising science but lacking capital to bring it to market. The big carrot being dangled was the huge IPF market and the $8b purchase of pirfenidone by Roche. PLI 4050 had had good initial results and Moran was even boasting about doors being knocked down by eager prospective partners.
I had hoped that Clulow, with his hard-nosed VC background, would bring some discipline to the company. Instead, easy access to capital seemed to have spiked PL's voracious appetite to go chasing after every rabbit that came in his sight. No visceral organ was spared. Lungs, liver, kidneys, heart. Studies here, trials there, posters and presentations at conferences and with every tiny piece of good news came the hype and a spike in shares. With exploding market cap it became easier to keep going back for more secondary offerings and Clulow kept participating because he didn't want TV's % holding to be diluted. If not shares, there were the loans, albeit at usurious interest. Soon TV was up to 19% and an anaconda grip of PLI's thorax with several hundred millions in loans.
Now I have nothing personal against Mr Clulow. I've observed him at several AGM's sitting very quietly at the end of the row on stage. Always eyes lowered, shiny bald plate, looking contemplative. I even engaged him a couple of times in informal chit chat and found him highly intelligent, sof spoken, very polite. . He may have had that taciturn mien of a banker but was quite candid in conversation. He had bought into PL's spiel, the way we all did. But he never once came to the mike on stage when so many others were blowing their own horn. Except at that one last AGM when Pierre invited Clulow to speak. I remember telling PL it was good to hear the reassurance from Clulow that PLI still had full TV support and confidence.
Things had turned south. Cashburn continued hotter than a Pacific coast wild fire. At the dinner that night at a splendid Old Montreal restaurant I noticed several new faces mingling about. A freshly hired sales force ... for a product they HOPED would get FDA approval, while senior management was sitting on a CRL.
I remember commenting that Clulow would have to do something to protect his own job.
By December he had fired PL and proceeded to shaft retail shareholders with this ugly reorganization. TV may have gone from 19% to 85% but the question remains, 85% of what? Will it ever recoup its investment of hundreds of millions in PL's baby? The writing is on the wall. Fat chance.
Clulow had to go and thus the other shoe drops.
Cheers