Geron Corp (GERN)

[Dickmo]

So put yourself in the position of the JNJ spokesperson. His company made a mistake and prematurely tipped off their planning. JNJ has three choices when asked it:

1) Admit that JNJ is moving forward with the deal and the job posting was probably not the best way to let the cat out of the bag. After they revive their chief counsel, they will have almost as much explaining to do as Elon Musk for his 'Fully Funded' comment. Not a good strategy.

2) Dummy up and say nothing or 'no comment'. That implies choice #1 without explicitly saying so. That's also a non-starter.

3) Make something up about how it was a prototype job spec written by some low level underling or better yet, some summer intern, based on all the new drugs in the pipeline without regard to acquisition status. Sounds like a dumb move on someone's part, but plausible. Someone will get reamed for it, but it's an honest mistake and now they have to deny it to fix it. So that's what they did.

The facts remain that either their HR department has a lot of turnover and people don't understand the severity of this action or someone forgot to review the copy before posting. I think the job posting was meant to happen 30 days from now and someone decided to move up the date. They neglected to read the copy before issuing the post and this mistake was published. But that's just my assessment of the situation.