@travelightor,
That holders of MSB - who claim/hope/expect/pray that Celgene a potential solution to MSB's funding challenges - don't even bother to try to establish what Celgene's stated position is in relation to MSB (and how the Celgene language or body language relating to its interest in MSB might change over time) amazes me on several levels.
If I was a MSB shareholder and I was hoping like crazy for Celgene to act as a financial backer for my company, I would be all over any utterance the Celgene makes, scrutinising like crazy for insights or clues that I think may affect and/or influence Celgene's strategic standpoint. And I would be on an ongoing basis checking and monitoring Celgene's financial position to see the extent that Celgene is able to act as a fiscal benefactor.
Yet, it is quite clear that very few people - even MSB's most strident believers - have taken the trouble to flick through a Celgene financial report in search of some clues, even the smallest of indications, of what Celgene might be saying or thinking about MSB.
But no, none of this.
(well, nothing other than, "Yep, I'm sure Celgene is going to be getting board. It's obvious they are keen on doing a deal with MSB. For they are, after all, still in negotiations. And I know this because I heard it from someone. Sure, not Celgene, but that's not important.)
But what makes this sort of blinkered intransigence even more bizarre, is that there has been a precedent which ended very badly: Two years ago I asked if anyone had done any due diligence on Teva to get a better, more-informed view of their commitment to the partnership with MSB, other than the HotCopper default view, which was,
"Surely Teva are committed! Totally ridiculous to even think otherwise!"),
...no one replied that they had done any work looking the Teva side of things.
I found no evidence that Teva was committed to MSB (in fact, I found them to a somewhat reluctant partner), as when i said as much, it was met at the time with jeers and boos and hisses.
And today, just a few weeks after the dropping of the Teva bombshell ("delightful" though that bombshell was), people here are still happy to plod blissfully along, perfectly content in not knowing what they don't know about Celgene.
Again, running with the convenient default view of,
"Surely Celgene are going to commit! Ridiculous to even think otherwise!
One would have thought that some lessons were learnt from the sorry ending of the Teva story, and that people might say to themselves, "I don't like it when the value of my shares almost halve in value, like they did when Teva shocked us all. So this time I'm going to do a bit of homework; some first-principles, fundamental research on who and what Celgene really is. Instead of spending so much time on HotCopper, glibly stating that Celgene is going partner with us, maybe I should just try to check what the chances of that are in reality."
But no.
Like I said, it amazes me on many levels.
(20min delay)