"What i dont understand is how the Directors could believe a...

"What i dont understand is how the Directors could believe a contract is close to being signed and state that publicly only to still be waiting AT LEAST 5 months later."

Andrew i'm not sure if you've noticed or are aware of the large amount of reorganisation in the large pharmaceutical companies over the past 12 months - closing of facilities, large scale retrenchments, reorganisation of entire businesses you only have to look at the current partners to see where much of this has occured with AZ & Roche but it goes much further past that & out to their industry peers. It's not unlikely that the direct personal that have been in charge of the deal negotiations have been either moved on to other areas or simply retrenched & the negotiations are then picked up by other personal within the company meaning a whole new suite of individuals that then need to grasp where things stand & the terms under negotiation. Again back to my pervious post & the amount of time it took deals to materialize after the company had publicly stated they thought the deals where close to being finalised. As for professional investors there are some wrapped into the registry as has been highlighted in recent weeks but i guess they rest with patience - FWIW the Dr has been a long term holder of stock from memory he just took advantage of NAOS to average down. I really couldn't be bothered with what "professional investors" are tied in the rewards from the investment will come via Phylogica delivering along its business objectives & there is nothing to say that is neccessarily anytime soon, it's always a long timeframe in drug discovery there's not really any fast track. You either have the patience & confidence in the science or you don't it's quite simple.