Ann: Appointment of Ms Janine Rolfe to the Cynata Board, page-5

truss20 wrote:

I don't really get the negativity around this appointment.

I've been eventually accused of negativity on every stock I've held and commented on. I can hold multiple competing views (alternate theories (including some positive and some negative) in mind at more or less the same time - but tend to get dialectic in discussion because finding what is wrong with my thinking helps me more than posting agreement). When the charge is associated with something very specific I've said I can examine it but when its general I just have to assume my alleged negativity is what my actual (I presume) realism looks like to the overly optimistic.

Lawyers are needed in every industry, particularly when you're negotiating complex licensing arrangements potentially across more than one indication.

Sure but lawyers have to be effectively briefed. If Ross is doing the briefing I don't think we'll get full value from lawyers.

In fact, our legal expenses were up $150k last FY, so appointing someone to the board for 1/3 of the cost sounds like sound financial management, no?

I don't see an independent non executive board appointment as being an operational management position. An operational manager spends a lot more time doing the actual tasks that a director that has more of an oversight role. An operation manager might do 40 hours of work a weeks say, whereas a board member won't dedicate that many hours.

I'm believing what you say about $150k up without checking, but to me the answer is no - to me you seem to be thinking a director will work like an operational manager. I think its more likely Ross will continue to brief the lawers (external) they'll continue to charge for their time and periodically the director with legal skills will sort of review.

My opinion is that this appointment is mainly to do with M&A.

Mine too. Very much so.

Not just potentially warding off (or attracting) suitors for Cynata, but also the potential acquisition of the Tekcyte technology, should the DFU trial go well.

I don't see that as being as complicated as you - you seem to think what lawyers do is more mysterious and complex - I think what they do is detailed but they have to be briefed correctly to understand a deal and if Ross is doing the briefing the deal that comes out from a lawyer crafting a deal will be the deal Ross outlined. If he misses something like the need for sub-licences the lawyer is very unlikely to know enough about the specific biotech requirements to be able to suggest that that is put in. In my opinion. I don't think Ross will be asking a new independent non executive director to write contracts. I think she'll be doing reviewing and providing miscellaneous advice. But mostly, honestly, I think she is there because she'll be able to say when a lowball under $2 is pitched and the directors that are there want to take it - that it looks like a fair and reasonable offer, given all the circumstances. But she may help them chase away the 60cent nuisance offers.

I don't think the sins of the past should be forgotten (the lost months of 2019 with Sumi's $2 offer, the director loans debacle).

I see it as very significant that you don't include the MEND trial in the list of sins. That's very recent and I think it is very likely perhaps 50% or better that CYP will reproduce the same pattern with GvHD - that is, that when it is glaringly obvious that recruiting is going to be a problem, I think CYP will plunge ahead without a proper plan to ensure recruitment because they dare not tell shareholders now, they still need "Cynata's lead product candidate CYP-001 - to quote from the top line of the last announcement - to have something to say, and shareholders will, I suspect, let them repeat the MEND mistakes.

However, you do need to assess things from the perspective of the present, rather than the past.

You and I talked about the MEND trial a bit - I had reservations, you had some counterpoint. They produced a DSMB mentioning announcement and I think you interpreted that as the DSMB had given them the go ahead, not that the DSMB was just doing a task separate to evaluating whether the trial was well designed.

I do a lot more reading than I think you know and I don't post most of what I learn because there has to be someone on the other side to exchange views with to justify the effort of putting a post together. After pfeifer you are the second best at doing that on CYP in my opinion. But in my opinion you keep wanting to put the past behind you and to forgive those that are not sorry but who I think are actually acting as though they are entitled. The CEO and Chariman writing they are pleased and proud to me seems like denial but also entitlement. Like they are entitled to sit there wasting shareholders money and that everything that is bad is not their fault.

I really quite liked your last post before this one because of the thought you'd obviously put into it and because of the way it was laid out - but I disagreed with a couple of its premises strongly.

1) The coin toss framing - heads I win, tails I don't lose.
2) The worst case scenarios didn't include CYP management running a dud GvHD like MEND (because they don't properly check upfront the feasibility of recruiting the numbers) but taking a lot longer to do it so wasting more money for no result whilst stringing shareholders along.

What I think you are mostly failing to incorporate into your worse case scenario is that CYP will incur some of the expenses of a aGVHD trial without properly planning it to get a result - so they'll effectively repeat MEND all over again.

Because you don't include MEND in their list of sins, you see things differently. You effectively absolve them for something for which they are not sorry and its a very recent thing.

The willingness to absolve failures to plan and failures to KPI properly is likely in my opinion to continue the pattern.

I intended to respond to your other post more thoughtfully. Even to offer you perhaps the opportunity to continue a discussion off list (Simply putting an email into a reply would enable that - I don't make that offer to many, and mostly its declined) if you wanted so that my negativity (as you and others perceive it) need not be seen so broadly but you'd still get the opportunity to hear an alternative view.