Luca26 Feb 2019 18:30
It is interesting that despite Luca no longer being part of the company that he is often recalled in peoples posts. He was of course running Apennine before Sound took them over and he had, through his father, a very close connection to Morocco and the Tendrara asset.
Over the years it was always the many conversations with Luca that I found most interesting, and most importantly, credible and genuine. He is primarily a production engineer, and his visions of what could be achieved at the TE-5 horst were not only exciting but reinforced with a genuine belief that anything was possible. I believe his thoughts were focused on bringing the asset to production and then consequently developing the rest of the license using revenue to self fund. On the coach down to TE-7 you could tell he had envisaged these scenarios; even when I questioned him on the practicality of achieving this he answered in his typically dismissive way - 'sure why not'.
The comment from the company about his retirement was in my opinion disingenuous. Luca's baby was a deflection. If he had an idea it was his own. When I first spoke to James Parsons his vision for the company was more or less aligned with Luca's. His current stance of being about high risk exploration and selling on was not always the case. Once it was about securing production and revenue. I think Marco coming on board influenced him, the success at TE-6 and 7 and with the consequential rise in SP, it changed his outlook - and I truly believe he started to lose his grounding and the alignment with shareholders it became more about his advancement not the company's.
Ultimately the Gherkin event was when this situation got out of control in my opinion. A Sound event used to generate interest in what was to be Echo. A vehicle for Greenbury to rinse and repeat. It marked a change in fortunes for Sound SP and it certainly marked the point where I started to question the methods of the company.
Luca's leaving was in my view because he didn't want to toe the party line. The position he was allocated prior to this was Country Chairman - wtf is that? He was simply sidelined and pushed out. This is the nature of the business though, the nature of any business in fact. If your vision doesn't align with the boss it's best to move on. We'll see soon enough how this plays out but I can't help feeling a little sorry that Luca wasn't there to the end. GLA and I will possibly see some of you in March.
Sign In
Follow the stocks
