Whatever Woodford wanted with putting his choice on the BoD or making any other demand of NWBO management, there was a time when he had lots of leverage and might have gotten whatever he wanted and that was BEFORE he handed over up a huge amount of cash, as should be obvious to anybody with a clue about how to negotiate. Why was he too dumb to do that?
After he gave them the money he had no leverage to tell LP what to do. After he gives up his leverage he can only get anything he wants by convincing Linda. But he was trying to twist her arm and then when that didn't work, he broke with her by going public with his beef. That was the action of a complete idiot who cut his own throat. The crowning piece of that break was his saying 'I never knew about [the AF dossier of claims]'. That statement was complete nonsense because for one thing most of the claims had already been published piecemeal and for another what kind of fool invests $100M in a company without doing any DD?
That was what led directly to the stock getting crushed because it broadcast that he would not put any more money into the company. Here he's just put $100M+ of his money into the company and then he turns around and puts a target on their back, announcing to the shorts that they have nothing to fear from him supporting the company. What kind of financial heavyweight does anything that stupid? Seems to me that his ego led him to the disastrous move of trashing the value of his own largest investment.
Whatever beef anybody has with LP in that saga the sad story starts with Woodford throwing away his leverage to ask for BoD seat(s) in exchange for investing and then trying to tell CEO/CoB LP what to do AFTER he had no leverage over her (except to ruin his own investment, which he did).
Was it spite or just a huge ego coupled with being a fool that explains how he went about making demands? We will never know but one thing is clear - Woodford trashed the company with his SEC filings and that led directly to a drastic loss of value of his largest single investment. The valuation of NWBO clearly rested on Woodford supporting it so largely. With Woodford continuing to back the company the shorts would never have dared to attack because even if he never invested more $, the threat that he might suddenly do so would always be a huge threat to anybody making a large short bet against the company. All he had to do was shut up, negotiate in private and not break with LP in public view, and oh yea, accept that after he's given NWBO his money he no longer had much leverage for a big ask.
