I talked with Susan Primrose today at IMUL and basically asked her the same questions that some of the other board participants have asked. I asked her flat out if Gerety had been fired. She was evasive. I then said that I had seldom seen a press release announcing a major resignation that didn't include the usual "mutual agreement" to separate or some nonsense about accomplishments--just a face-saving gesture for company and the CEO. That's when, in not so many words, she told me that Gerety had been fired.
Small's resignation appears to be unrelated to Gerety's firing. He had a chance to take a post with a start-up and chose to do so.
IMUL's board isn't stupid. They had to know that this firing would, yet again, cause IMUL's stock price to plunge (because of the added uncertainty). Why didn't they have another CEO already in place or at least some kind of story? I think the answer is simple: something big and bad happened, was brought to the board's attention, and Gerety was fired for it. One reason I say this is that Gerety is already literally out of IMUL's offices (Susan confirmed this). The other reason is simply the sparseness of the press release--I think it was designed to embarrass Gerety. For goodness sake, they didn't even thank him for his contributions to the company! If it were a disagreement over partnerships, wouldn't Gefter [IMUL's chairman] have been quoted thanking Gerety for his fine work? Neither Gerety nor Gefter were even quoted in the press release!
I told Susan that it would be hard to find someone with Gerety's reputation and they had better search high and low for the right person. She agreed. (She was in an agreeing mood by the time I reached her.)
This won't inspire confidence in IMUL's management and, in fact, just strengthens their already bad reputation for negative surprises. All this within two weeks of the first new buy recommendation (from UBS securities) in about 8 months! The poor guy at UBS must feel like an absolute fool--and I don't think he's too happy with IMUL, either. Personally, I give IMUL an "F" for relations with both Wall Street and its own stockholders.
I did reiterate in very strong (but polite) terms to Susan that we shareholders and investors were tired of the growing uncertainty surrounding IMUL--the placebo effect, partnership, and, now, sudden management changes--and that she should impart to the Board that they need resolve some of these issues quickly and favorably or at least tell us what direction IMUL is heading. Of course, she agreed.
Paul |
