alans new salary, page-50

D-Giff I know you're a long term holder, supporter and battler against the downrampers, and we've fought some of those battles together, but to say you don't give Alan any credibility to meet his targets on time is pushing the envelope more than a little bit.

We all know St Mary's etc. etc. and my guess is we'll still be hearing about it in 2011 from those with nothing better to say. But the past is so far gone now it's not funny. The Aventis partnership has been five years in the making. The deal itself was specifically time-lined over six months ago. Throughout this time Alan Shortall has been negotiating with the highest level of the Aventis executive and legal counsel, many times just him with several executives on the other side of the table, and he nailed it to the wall precisely on time as he said he would.

This would not have happened without the IBS takeover. IBS was critical to the Aventis licence agreement because they had to have absolute confidence that we could make the syringes to the volumes required. We now have the technical ability, the licence agreement, the market share, distribution and funding in place to build the required manufacturing facility and do the job properly.

Alan Shortall stated very clearly several times that the opportunity was so big and so unique that all available resources were being put towards making it happen. He has done just that.

If he hadn't seen the opportunity for what it was and grabbed it with both hands, we could be just like the other outfits selling a few million here and there into the domestic market with the help of government funded programmes. But if he did that, what would the screaming hordes be saying then? All that wait for nothing?

Moreover, had he failed in his quest to take Unilife into the truly global big time, he would have been crucified. But he didn't fail. He succeeded. In a high risk, high reward winner take all game, he put everything on the line, including his professional credibilty, and won. It's probably fair to say that had St Mary's not happened, we probably wouldn't be where we are today. St Mary's was a very steep learning curve. Alan Shortall saw what needed to be done and put in place a strategy to do it. Seems to me that so far, since then, he's met every target he said he would and there's no reason now to think that he won't continue to do so.

Today, Unilife is in a far stronger position than it has ever been in. We are now all shareholders in an emerging global success story, not a "struggling wannabe syringe developer' as some media critics have previously labelled our company. There are many more projects being worked on right now that will only increase that success. All of them have been well-signalled. My guess, or opinion if you like, is that they will all enjoy the same level of success, on time, as has this company making deal with Aventis.

I say, credit where it's due.

Time to look forwards not backwards, with apologies if this it all too long-winded.