Ms. Duff is a consultant. And being a consultant myself, I can tell you that we are not always listened to by those who engage our services.
I have called her recently and we got to talking 'consultant talk'.
She is still working with Veltex but reminded me that Veltex is only one of her clients.
She is confident that Veltex is a real company and she believes that there is an audit in process.
When I asked her reasons for continuing to work with Veltex, she laughed and said "Well, it's not the money, that's for sure!" which I thought was interesting considering all the charges on the other board that Veltex insiders are getting away with millions! I don't think so.
She went on to talk about how small companies have such a difficult time these days with very little funding available and how many small companies that try to access the public markets for funding get attacked by professional short sellers who try to drive the company off the market because if that happens all the money they made selling short is free money.
She also said that in her opinion (and she stressed to me that it is only her opinion) Matin has done some brilliant things putting together the company and has also made some mistakes which she thinks are due to a cultural misunderstanding of US business customs combined with the difficulty of growing a small company. Different cultures, different customs is what she said. So I asked what she thought was so brilliant and she said the vertical nature of the company is very good because it allows Veltex to sell products without all the middle men involved.
I asked why the company seems to be so poorly run and she said that she works with a lot of small companies and she sees them all make mistakes because they don't have the financial resources to put into high-priced staff and the staff they do have must do several different jobs. She also said it does not help to have angry shareholders calling to ask about things the bashers are posting and trying to get the secretaries to reveal inside information.
This is just my own synopsis of our conversation but I thought I'd post this to answer some of your questions so she doesn't get a lot of phone calls asking the same things I asked. She said she does get a lot of calls and it takes time away from her other clients and she feels it is not her job to do IR and she doesn't like people trying to get her to reveal secrets.
