Ann: Material Revenues Confirmed from Non-Pharma Business Units, page-46

First of all, welcome back Learner.

There were 5 individual contracts - each of $4-8mil each. Adding up to the $40mil total.You and I will have to read back on them to know why there were that many - to be honest I recall the reason why. I have sort of moved on and relegated the VC fiasco to the history I don't want to remember pile

The first contract was for $4 which included a "sign on" amount of $1mil.

I suspect (but obviously don't know for sure) that it is the $1mil that MXC wants to recover - GBP625k would have been roughly in the $1mil AUD area when legal action was announced. - it is now about $1.1mil AUD. MXC may have thought it was easier to chase just that "deposit" given there was a lot of noise of quality control and damaged goods from VC over the first 12 months of the contract period - so that could get very messy if VC argued that it was not able to uphold its end of the bargain because of circumstances outside of its control.

Just a word on arbitration based on my very limited exposure to the process. I can understand that VC would go down this route. In my non legal view the party that has a weaker case would find a decision from an arbitrator much better - the arbitrator would award the appropriate damages but not impose additional sanctions for wrong doing etc - that is not what the arbitration court is for. A regular court may do otherwise depending on what facts come out.

The bad news:
1) Arbitration - if protracted - can be expensive.
2) Arbitration is not fast.
3) When the parties sign up they normally hand over full power to the arbitrator - in other words it is winner take all - there is no appeal process - the parties sign on for that at the beginning of the process - so the arbitrators decision is final - and there is no room for appeals on law or fact.