Member Info for Spacman

When it was explained to RM that TFG’s 25%+ stake was a capital raise blocker, he lost any interest in shielding the SP (except when it might have come to a time when he wanted to sell his own shares of course). His complete carelessness has come back around to force him out of a job. Had he kept it up, at say 30p with a shrewd programme of promotion and communication to the market, then a £60m value company might have had a chance of raising debt finance and pursuing trials. Conversely, no bank’s credit committee, in their right mind, would lend to a company valued at nothing save for a cash balance just sufficient to keep the lights on. Last year’s incoming CFO must have understood that and therefore gambled on RM landing a deal with a friendly pharma. But it seems like nobody ever wanted to be friends with Dickie. An open door into J&J for two years and still they didn’t want to come out to play. Mind you, alienate the likes of Rick Bright and Ray Jordan by spurning a SPAC, then switch off a global BP professional mouthpiece in Brooke Clarke, and the challenge of trying to find support in a connected pharma world then just gets a tad more difficult.

In addition, the complete abandonment of the SP will have upset whichever team at TFG carry the Synairgen investment in their portfolio against which their annual bonuses are calculated. The Annual Report and AGM shenanigans seems to have been the final nail in the coffin. I imagine that support in the Boardroom evaporated as reputations were being put at risk. If I was Amanda Radford I would have been livid at RM gaming the system to buy more time. TFG probably made their move at that point as Board members (or at least some of them) started to become more conducive.

It looks like it’s taken a couple of months to recruit a new CEO who will be announced this week or next. The “early October” timing of the AGM seems to be dependent on having this new CEO in place. I’m very excited for the new CEO arrival and keen to debate it, but for now, just expressing a huge sense of relief that Dickie has surely gone. He made his own situation untenable.

Pmjh - I just know there is the 15 month rule, what I don't know are the anticipated repercussions of not abiding by it. Synairgen will take legal advice on that I assume, but clearly their natural instinct is avoidance of accountability.

As Doc83 keeps saying, periodic reporting is the requirement, regardless. The AGM shouldn't be news/events driven.

Unless Synairgen think they can commence, complete and report on the MV trial... and then arrange further funding on the assumed success of that to extend their cash runway beyond Q1 2026... all by June next year... then the problem of Going Concern qualification returns.

Alternatively, they need to arrange finance now not just for 100% of the trial costs (or presumably a good proportion, don't think there would be much spare cash given they had to sack the CCO and Quality guy to make the Going Concern spreadsheet work last time) but ALSO enough to extend at least another 6 months on from the current Q1 2026.

So who is going to put up both trial funding and working capital, which essentially is an equity risk? And why would an external party take all that risk without getting their hands on the asset substantially in some way, shape or form?

If Marsden's haughty treatment of shareholders has been repeated with sector players over the years then no wonder Synairgen are struggling to attract friendly support.

Unless Synairgen have been advised by their lawyers that breaching the 15 month rule is a "no no" then don't expect an AGM. The directors' egos and absolute lack of any humility won't allow them to face the shareholders and apologise.

Roll on a buy-out please.

Just days after BDO signs off our accounts, this headline...

https://www.ft.com/content/6371e8ef-68bd-42e3-86c6-e2e7319adffa

You really couldn't make it up. Synairgen as a business is a maelstrom of sub-mediocrity.

When will TFG make a move to prise the asset out of Shaw's and Marsden's gnarled fingers and into the comely bosom of BP, getting us all our money back? The Dismal Duo have ten months left before the next end-date audit sign-off to get some financing in place, the same length of time the new CFO's already been in place, that veteran of an, er, £3m fund raise proudly showcased on his CV. I'd love to be proved wrong, but can't see it.

Interesting thinking on the Sprinter financials though Tattyhead. How much went out on that - £60m? The question was asked on aggregate spend at the AGM (remember those things?) and Ward couldn't (or wouldn't) even answer that. Two of the lucky recipients of that seemingly unquantifiable bounty have even gone onto the Synairgen payroll since. Cheers everybody, drinks all round!

What a wonderful dream Tattyhead.

Unfortunately the pharma world doesn't like hostile transfers of IP as "bits" might go missing and that's why TFG haven't done it already. Holgate has to go willingly into the deal but unlikely whilst he has Shaw and Marsden pulling his strings...

...however let's all still wallow in Tattyhead's tour de force post for a brief time.

Looks like we're going to hold fourpence!

Lean across the desk Fruits and shake Dickie's hand! Or does Synairgen have a "shirking from home" policy?

Aether has donned his deerstalker, tapped his pipe on the heel of his brogue, and is preparing to out Fruits...

Stop obfuscating Fruits, what's your team's purpose?

Fruits has come out of the corner swinging, with five responses already on this thread lol. But the serious point of all this is to understand their motivation and what we can take from that... any more ideas anybody?

This is not a note to gossip about these posters per se, but to ask the question as to their motivation and what that means, and could it actually be positive?

Their slavish support of a management that has let the share price crash 98% is illogical. Their commitment to duty is likewise irrational - earlier this summer TommyD was like an amphetamine'd-up octopus playing Whack-a-Mole every time the slightest criticism was levelled.

So there seems to be some company(?) desire to control/contain/suppress the narrative on here. But why? The optimist in me is glad that the company or its slavish followers wants to protect the reputation... it means that something of value is at stake to somebody. But what and for whom? Is it just to keep Marsden et al in situ and the gravy train rolling on? Or is the criticism suppression to present a more positive picture to the prying eyes of BP who then might be looking to take them all on the payroll at vastly inflated salaries and enhanced share packages? It's certainly not for the benefit of shareholders, although it could yet be, indirectly, if that BP hypothesis is anywhere near the mark.

I struggle to conceive that a simple message board has such importance outside of the community that actually frequent it. So why this gargantuan effort? Is it a positive sign ultimately? Or is it plain company ego? Or simply just annoying lol.

Thank you Jonnyboy

Lol Fruits, a Stalinist re-write of history if ever there was one.

Try: CEO gets PE house onboard to fund acquisition, PE house "turn" and decide he's not the CEO to integrate the two businesses, and make his position untenable. That's how it would read to most rational people. Medical expertise? Hopefully. Commercial nous- nah, but at least he's in good company on that score now.

We have a hopeless management team, that's an opinion based on the chronic under-achievement we have all witnessed. Answer me this Fruits - if they are doing such a good job as you suggest, then why won't they (you?) make themselves accountable at an AGM?

Fruits, Marsden has had two and a half years to come up with a trial and has failed. But carry on eh? The very definition of insanity.

Conversely, valuations data for P2 pharmas tells us that a figure of £400m (£2 ps) is not unrealistic, and loose change to BP. Carelessly allowing the SP to be trashed to threepence was not a smart decision by the BoD in terms of a negotiation/perception start point, but all we need is TFG and/or an Investment Bank to put together a competitive auction and we get there.

Fruits – I don’t know why you continue this line that TFG are demonstratively supportive. They aren’t.

1) They immediately got the “75% vote requirement for capital raise” blocker in after the Sprinter disaster.

2) They doubled down on that with resolution at the 2022 AGM to remove the remaining share allotment powers from the BoD, which had equated to something like a 10% enlargement of share capital (and which is why TFG had gone to “25% plus 25% of 10% = circa 28%” in the meantime).

There is now a stand-off in that they can’t go hostile because that’s not what happens in the pharma sector, it upsets regulators. So, they have to wait on one of two things:

A. Either the familial ties of Holgate-Shaw-Marsden rupturing and Marsden being pushed out; or

B. The company running out of road and accepting the inevitable, putting a forced smile on their faces, and agreeing a deal to sell to BP.

We are getting close to B, with any luck.

But there hasn't been any UNIVERSAL data so far that has opened up new possibilities, they're saying that only the MV route is currently viable.

Very interesting Jint, as you suggest, this may well be the biggest driver of all for the BoD to pick up the pace. Thank you.

Regardless of the UNIVERSAL programme itself, and regardless of how much Synairgen have pumped it (or not), without the company being able to claim that the emerging data would bolster future funding attempts then they would not have had a Going Concern rationale - and they would been forced to go down the sale route by now.

UNIVERSAL has saved Marsden's skin, for now. I'm surprised he hasn't joined this thread in appreciation. I wonder if he owns a tiny Tom Wilkinson mannequin that he lights a candle and places food offerings next to.

Fruits - "It would a gross transgression of ethics, not to mention career-limiting, for lead investigators such as Prof. Wilkinson to allow sick patients in their trial to used for Synairgen to, as you put it, "buy more time"."

You're twisting it Fruits. My point has nothing to do with the actual workings of the Universal programme. My point is that Synairgen have suddenly conveniently attached themselves to it as being front-and-centre in their latest update when they need to link it into a funding strategy narrative. Previously Marsden had been at pains to say how it's TW's project and was coincidental to Synairgen's overall Business Plan. It's the sudden "appropriation" that is laughable.

nice link jj!

and... "thru'penny bit" is, of course, ****ney rhyming slang for...

"marsden"

possibly the worst ceo post-decimalisation!

it all links!