Sal- I am not asking anyone to do anything, YET.
Lets not get carried away. In my original posting, found at, exchange2000.com
I did not ask for anyone's proxy, nor did I say I had decided to even vote shares for anyone but my own interests. Precisely, I said the following:
"If enough shareholders are interested in having me vote their
proxies for a consensus plan (assuming we can arrive at one), I
will try to locate the large block holders that are not affiliated
with management, and seek their support. In fact, I have a hunch
that they or their representatives read this thread, and I invite
their responses as well.
As you can see, I proposed simply one possible plan. But I did not even presume that my plan was either the best one, nor the one that would generate a "consensus". What I said precisely was:
"I am willing to collect proxies from
shareholders and to attend the meeting for the purpose of offering
an alternative plan. The one I suggest above is not written in
granite, and many of you shareholders have more experience with C CEE than I. Frankly, my plan is based solely on logic."
A proxy will require a large amount of work, and expense on my part. My investment in CCEE is substantial, but no so large that I am willing to go into debt to present an alternative at the shareholders' meeting where the shareholders suspect I am working against their interests. That much of a good citizen, I am not.
As you can see, I acknowledged clearly in my original posting that there may be a far superior plan than mine, but in my estimation, someone had to step forward and take action; all of the whining and carping on this thread with no plan other than the useless suggestion of "JUST SAY NO, struck me as doubly counter-productive. It could not help the trading price of the stock while we awaited the meeting on the one hand, and on the other, the sobbing by the disappointed shareholders coupled with the lunacy of the termite resulted in there being no sensible discussion of what our options as shareholders really might be.
I therefore calculated the number of shares held by management (about 6%), guessed at the large blocks based on the size of block trades in the month of September and what Mr. West said he had sold to his customers, and concluded that the little guys (i.e., us) if we acted with the large blocks, could probably make a run for it and cause the company to listen to reason. I thought at the very least, I could generate interest in fighting back instead of moaning and feeling victimized.
Sal, your problem is that you are listening to the termite-maniac and giving him credit for being a normal person. Give it up. If normal people were like Rick, the Human race would not have made it past Neanderthal Man. Use your logic. The company proposed essentially 3 things:(1)increase the float by 150 million shares; (2)create a classified board; and (3) A reverse stock split to satisfy NASDAQ rules. I opposed the float increase and the classified board proposals and stated why. I am in favor of the reverse split for only one reason, I refuse to own a stock on the bulletin board/pink sheets because I have seen too many of my clients get hustled on pink sheet stocks. Can anyone here disagree with my logic?
For the termite to use the lone coincidence that I practice in Philadelphia and the meeting was scheduled there (during the Thanksgiving period to keep the crowd to a minimum), is a Rickism. That means it shares the following characteristics: it is stupid, malicious and the product of a demented mind.
The last thing Rick could live with is if Bohemia suddenly began to listen to shareholders and to act as a responsive management acts.
Now put yourself in my shoes. I received a ton of unsolicited e-mail asking my advice, and some inquired if I could vote their shares since my office is in Philadelphia, and they assumed I would attend the meeting. I spent my own hours (for which clients gladly and regularly pay me $300/hour--thank you) to make phone calls and to investigate management's attitude, as well as to locate where the large blocks of stock are located. If you are a shareholder, I did that for you along with other shareholders, including of course, myself. And then I took the additional time to carefully report everything of relevance I learned in a posting on this thread. Who else on this thread did anything like that?
I specifically asked that we discuss the pros and cons of my plan, and invited all others (except the termite-for obvious reasons) to add substantive comments and criticisms. Have you seen any substantive comments yet?
What are we talking about? The coincidence that I practice in Philadelphia? Or am I an employee or lawyer for CCEE? [Check out the Winter, 1996-97 postings on the ECO2 thread on Silicon Investor and you will find out who I am, and how I operate. You will easily determine the thousands of dollars my law firm poured into the effort of first trying to force a dialogue between a crooked management and the shareholders, and then to attempt to paste together a large enough group to litigate--only to find out the company vanished and there were no target defendants to sue.
If you want to elevate Rick to the status of a human being, that is your own mistake in judgement. If there were to be an outside proxy, it would not be the termite who would be filing the forms to comply with Rule 14(a) of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, nor would the termite be the one paying a lawyer to do the work--I would incur that burden. And it would not be the termite who would be forced by the law to spend the money to notify the shareholders of the outsiders' proxy solicitation (all 20,000 or so of them), that would fall on my shoulders too.)
Now ask yourself, what in the world would I have to gain by doing all of this? And why would management need me or anyone to do an outsiders' proxy solicitation to achieve this result--management could simply agree to table or withdraw the two proposals I find offensive and leave only the needed reverse split authorization.
There is nothing more discouraging than to step forward in an effort to bring people in a crisis together, and to find that some heckling jackass is able to divert their attention away from the issues that must be discussed.
Hey Sal if you were me, would you still feel enthusiastic about helping your fellow shareholders to unite behind a pro-shareholder position and to then bear the burden of implementing the consensus plan?
It is a free country Sal, and if you feel comfortable being associated with the thoughts and actions of Rick, I suppose the two of you can flock together in one cozy little nest-termite/ant size. |
