Do you realize that when Powers was recruited as CEO of NWBO she already owned Cognate and she gave as a condition of her taking the job as NWBO's CEO that NWBO would use Cognate? So Cognate was a priority for her but the way you put it distorts the fact that her interest in Cognate completely predated her becoming CEO of NWBO. It's true that this created a conflict of interest but the truth is that her interest in Cognate predated her interest in NWBO and that the relationship was accepted by NWBO's BoD and retiring CEO when they recruited Powers. It's quite possible that no other candidate for CEO came forward because the odds of NWBO succeeding likely seemed very low at that time, but I'm far from familiar enough with the history to claim that I know that for certain.
Another point you'll never talk about: Powers gave up her interest in Cognate in a management-led buyout financed by some 3rd party(ies). I don't think we know the buyout terms but we do know that a few years later, Cognate was purchased by CRL. IIRC the purchase price was $800M. From where I'm sitting it appears certain that Powers lost the opportunity for far greater financial gain if she had just held her interest in Cognate another year or two than she realized in selling when she did, and I'm sure that she did so to get out of the conflict of interest, which admittedly was not a great situation WRT corporate governance.
It's certainly a fact that she benefitted from owning Cognate while they grew their business (how largely Cognate's business success depended on NWBO alone I would not know but obviously they built a very successful business besides with NWBO alone) on the base of supplying NWBO for their trials and other activity. However, it's also certain that she gave up the huge additional profit that was realized when Cognate was sold on to CRL. Since you want to focus on how much Cognate profited from their relationship with NWBO while building a very successful business including gaining valuable contracts with other companies, I'm sure you overlook the fact that she gave up several hundred millions of larger profit that she could have had if she had held onto ownership of Cognate another couple of years. You obviously ignore that fact because you want to paint her as a terrible villain but I think you distort the true picture.
When it comes to NWBO retaining the services of Advent Bioloservices I'm sure that the prime reason that NWBO ex-Powers went along with that in spite of repeating the financial conflict of interest due to Power's personal stake in Advent, was the fact that Mike Scott is a genius and super experienced in cellular technology, with 30 years experience and a professorship, and BTW I believe he already had a team including other cellular science PhDs. Do you really think it would have been easy for NWBO to assemble a similarly qualified team of experts in the technologies so key to their success? I'm sure it would not, especially guys like Mike Scott are few and far between! This is Scott's bio:
Mike brings a wealth of experience to Advent Bioservices, having held several senior clinical and scientific positions within the NHS and in academia. He has spent 30 years in the field of cellular therapy and has co-authored more than 90 papers. Mike has Masters’ degrees in haematology and immunology and his PhD was in the area of stem cell biology. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists and holds a visiting Professorship at Anglia Ruskin University.
