Hi Resourced,
Appreciate your work on this.
The Courier Mail and Australian articles are from 2013-214. The blog is 2013.
It's all very well to apportion blame to BOD for not performing thorough due diligence, but I think as investors/speculators we all have that responsibility as well. I never found those articles. If I had, I would not have gone anywhere near FTT, let alone TIS. I can think of others who were in TIS and in direct contact with Mercer - as far as I am aware they never knew about them. I never remember them being posted on HC? Maybe someone can say if they were?
The question then becomes, were the new BOD aware of the allegations? If so, why did they not disclose them? Perhaps more importantly, if they were aware of the allegations, why did they proceed with the trial? Did they know about them and not give them any scientific weight? These are highly credentialled professionals. Were QUT complicit? Never say never, but I cannot believe there was a conspiracy to keep it all quiet. If it ever came out that they had in fact conspired to keep it under wraps, the reputational damage would be enormous and permanent. Was the trial really about disproving the allegations contained in the articles in the "hope" they were wrong? Seems a poor reason to conduct an expensive global trial.
But if that was the case, how can one be accused of conspiring to conceal info that is very clearly front and centre in the public domain? It's not as if the newspaper reports were privy only to the BOD.
The question then becomes, if they did know, why did they proceed? Remember also that various funds including Alan Gray saw fit to throw large chunks of cash at this. Were they also blinded by the light, and failed in their DD?
Lastly, I would say that VF001 didn't actually fail. It worked, displaying efficacy but only in so far as it was no better than rigourously applied standard of care. In that light, were the allegations true?
Will you get answers? Probably not. In all likelihood whatever happened and why will never be known. Certainly it's a bitter pill for all concerned. I feel for you and your family. I can only speak for myself when I say my own DD was inadequate, something I will regret for a while to come. Trusting prior reputation has proved to be a dangerous thing, but what else can you do? Other than conduct more effective DD......
Lesson learned, I hope.
Time to move on.
Either that, or someone stumps up a hell of a lot of cash for some legals......
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