that's an interesting point... maybe PV was giving date certain time frames (for the AFs) not to appease the shareholders but because wessal was pressuring the company into providing them (within their own time frames). maybe they told PV they would sell if they didn't hear something by a certain date so he was forced to try to make these deadlines without knowing whether he could. the end result was that it blew up in his face but either way wessal would have sold because their deadline was not met.
i only suggest this because i can't imagine PV putting out these timeframes without being totally certain, in which case he wasn't, but was trying to keep the peace with a company that was demanding them.
Of course this is all speculation on my part. Either way it was a bad move to promise something that you couldn't be sure of delivering.