Many people conflate responsibility with blame. The CEO, as the...

Many people conflate responsibility with blame.

The CEO, as the responsible person, carries the weight of the company, but is not to blame if someone in accounting carries out a complex fraud. I fully accept that the CEO (not ex yet) has to be held responsible for whatever happened on her watch, but it remains unclear to me exactly what that will mean in concrete terms. Almost without doubt it will mean the permanent end of her tenure at POH. Our loss, perhaps, but necessary under the circumstances.

Depending on what the investigations show actually show transpired, there could be more; perhaps the police will become involved if there is evidence of criminality.

KC points out the the CEO would have been "signing off on accounts," but she surely would not have been entering the data. That means it would be virtually impossible for the CEO to have engineered a self-enriching fraud.

I think it is far more likely that there were sales, perhaps of Bioelixia products, that did not follow normal pricing policy; unusual discounts offered to certain buyers that although not illegal might represent an ethical deviation in most minds. If this is the case, then the matter is not so cut and dried - it would depend on the kind of case that could be made for the business wisdom of the discounts and that is within the range of discretionary power normally accorded to a CEO.

I remain interested in seeing how this plays out, but I am far more interested in the results of the single does oxycodone trials that might be expected in the coming week.

Longer term, the board will have a challenge in finding a new and equally able CEO to take the company through the next stage of development. Perhaps it was time for this kind of change in any case.