Ann: Results of Meeting, page-75

Morning All

Good discussion, albeit we are all speculating.

My concern is not so much Hoos' departure, but the nature of it, brutally executed in public. We need to think through how and why this might have happened.

Firstly, Hoos was a Board-endorsed candidate. Had Hopper as Chair not wanted him re-elected, he would hardly have engineered his demise in such a public and humiliating fashion: He would have taken him into a quiet office and informed him his services were no longer required. Hoos would have saved face ... 'My new role at Scorpion will require my full attention blah blah blah' ... and the Board would have recommended a replacement (or not). Instead, both Hoos and the Board now find themselves embarrassed.

The Board's embarrassment is two-fold. Firstly, their candidate got shot in public. Secondly, and more worryingly, the Board was obviously blindsided by shareholders with sufficient clout to muster a billion votes but insufficient reason to tell Hopper the gun was loaded. That says to me there may - may - be forces marshalled against the Board.

Think about it. If you were able to deliver a knockout blow of nearly 20 per cent of the SOI, and your motives were pure - we think he has an unresolvable conflict of interest - then would you not seek an audience with Hopper to outline your concerns and point out the very large baseball bat in your back pocket? Instead, you let Hopper stand Hoos up against the wall and then shoot him in public.


In a sense we should not be surprised. Daily now we see the share price being pushed and pulled by the army of bots crawling all over it. Actors are on the stage. Imugene is now a $3 billion venture on the cusp of the ASX 200. It also has drug candidates - and one in particular in CF33 - with the potential to create a $300 billion company. The game has changed ... big time ... and I believe we have just seen a brutal example of the lengths big players will go to in order to get a bigger slice of the pie.

We can all pretend this vote against Hoos is benign and the caravan moves on. I'm not so sure. I see a good man gone in humiliating circumstances and a Board and Chairman seemingly blindsided by forces that did not take them into confidence. It's worrying.

OOO