Ann: PAR Appoints Business Development Consultant, page-192

Ox, there are a handful of posters on this forum that I know are on the level and completely respect, and you are 100% one of them. So, even if you were subtly hinting that critics of PR like myself (I wasn't always, but I am now) need to pull their heads in a bit - then i'd take it on board and reflect on it.

The main point that I wanted to get across in my last post was that i'd now advocate for serious company restructuring. I think we should strip down costs dramatically, and that the sole focus should be on getting Zilosul through Phase III OA pain and function trials - and nothing else. Any units of the business who aren't needed for this specific purpose should be shed until such time reliable revenues streams are open. We need to make the money in the bank, and any further monies raised, take us as far as possible down that one single road. We need to extend the runway into the Phase III trials as far as every dollar we hold can stretch it, because at the current rate....we may conservatively need well over $100m (and possibly a lot lot more) to reach first genuine sales.

PR's strategy at the helm of PAR has not been so laser-focused, and that has been a major contributor to our sorry position. Serious money has been spent over the years on RRV, ChikV, Heart Failure and ARDS. Even MPS and DMOAD do not come with guarantees of an investment return, This is all part of PR's largesse imo. His dream of a 'late stage drug development company' of taking on everything at once, has led to a company which spends profligately, and has yet to recoup any of this serious investment in sales revenue or even in a sales agreement with a third-party. This is a deep concern. Why is this?

OA is surely the prize, so lets cut costs severely, buy time, and see if this company's only true asset - the exclusive supply agreement with Bene - can be monetised at all. If it can, then by all means broaden to a "late stage drug development company" looking at the whole range of indications, even further drugs to develop, but with a strong focus on gauging the certainly of investment return before money is spent on such projects ever again.

My view is that if PR was a not such a major shareholder, he would have been dropped from his role/s by now simply due to the abject failure of preserving shareholder value, as well as the costly over-exuberance of his strategy. This strategy, with hindsight, was always a ridiculously expensive ego-driven vision, and lacked the laser-focused frugality we probably needed to manage expenditure. In his euphoria, he tried to make PAR run before it could crawl. When Marco was employed as CEO it was said that Paul would retain responsibility for finding deals in his role as Chair. Since then he has employed outside consultants to do this for him, Plexus, Angel Pond and now Scott Williams. I do not see, therefore, what the man brings - aside from his shareholding. His strategy has been disastrous so far. He is also now deeply distrusted by the market, and for very good reason. In a true restructuring of the company, his is one of the roles which I think could easily be cut. Donna, for example, who is leading Phase III OA trials, could easily become interim CEO is such a streamlined company where this pursuit becomes the sole focus of the next year or two.