fate, page-23

Very kind of you maxineamillion and I am happy to have helped.

Maybe instead of bashing Benitec management we should look at what they have done right. My sense is that there is an "older" Benitec that was happy to see the company remain a brilliant organization that licensed tech but kept a very low profile. My history of the company is that Peter French came aboard, and has gently turned it into a clinical stage company. People need to realize that going from pre-clinical to clinical is a sea change. In changing the company in this way, he has brought it into the position of having to face down the FDA, face nucleic acid regulatory committees. He has had to place himself on the roadshow circuit to sell, defend, present. Being a pre-clinical company may not be a cakewalk (nothing is in biotech), but it is one bloody hell of a lot simpler, more facile, more direct, less nuanced than being a clinical stage company.

French recognized the company's quintessentially quaint Australian capital structure, which American investors do not like, and fixed that with a reverse split. This made American investors pay notice and telegraphed that he is serious about this company.

One thing I will say about Benitec is that it is an Australian company that has dealt with uniquely American obstacles such as the FDA. It has dealt with them gracefully, eloquently, without a hitch. Benitec has been commended at every corner for the elegance of its science and quality of its pre-clinical data leading into the TT-034 trial. Regulators and committees could have sent them packing, back to the drawing board, but they did not because Benitec's execution was perfect. Those of you in Australia, I love your country, and one thing I like about it is how much more sensible, in some ways, it can be than my own. NO ONE is ever perfectly prepared for the FDA. Here a company from another country with no experience did a bravura performance. Remember the Monty Python sketch line: "NO ONE EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!" Well, somehow, French and Suhy knew what to expect and they played the FDA non-duplicitously and brilliantly the way Paganini played the violin.

So those of you who would speak ill of Benitec management, you've not got a leg to stand on. Your guns have melted. Let those without imperfection cast the first stone.