Re: MW / I've read the board's comments and MW's deposition and my observations - aimo - are:
1. Deposition reads like he tried to turn a deal, cloaked in a layperson's ignorance of the machinations of a restructuring BK and the EC which participated in a settlement for equity and a position on the NEWCO Board, upon emergence.
2. WMI may have been his third time around in positioning himself for a similar role; he, having learned, through experience, how to maximize his role as consultant and/or Board Member / Chair of an EC.
3. In his deposition (for Pilgrim's Pride, was it?) he apparantly negotiated consulting fees and a salary/stipend consisting of somewhere around 20-30% of his annual total income of $300,000 that year (if I'm remembering correctly - which would be about $60,000+)
4. He only owned 2,500 equity shares in the post BK entity
5. He currently owns 1,000,000 shares of post BK Wamuq commons
He owns 4,000 times the number of common equity shares in his present incarnation and role as EC Board Member/Chair, than the number of shares from the restructuring BK from his deposition.
One could certainly infer that he has learned how to turn an EC post into a lucrative position for himself upon emergence. One could also infer that it is a thin line that separates a COI for an EC Chair to emerge in a paid position on a reorganized BOD.
While he may have been able to play a naïveté card when deposed for his role in Pilgrim's Pride, that doesn't wash when it comes to his role as EC Chair during negotiations and mediated settlement for NEWCO WMI.
HOWEVER - compensation for 2 years (or however long) of one's time as EC Chair is not unreasonable; leveraging one's work into a salaried or stipended role is not entirely unreasonable; owning 1,000,000 shares of common equity is a lot of skin in the game, as opposed to 2,500 shares of Pilgrim's Pride; and unless someone can PROVE, and not simply imply, that MW pulled some sort of shennanigans on "inside information" about a thinness of return on his 1,000,000 share investment and thus took a strong advocacy position in mediation for a deal that would give him more for his role as emerging NEWCO Boad Member of Chair than the possibility of return on his equity investment, tainting the process out of self interest, I'd STFU about it until/unless you've got something concrete to subpoena or depose him for.
We all went into this imagining ROI for ourselves; why should MW be different? And we bandied numbers between .50/sh and 24+/sh on emergence, depending on which way the litigious winds blew. Maybe MW knew there was an adjunct end-game for himself in terms of a position in NEWCO; but those 1,000,000 shares of his are nothing to sneeze at, and my instinct is that he played this first, for recovery and profit on his post-BK shares, with any longer-term position for himself on NEWCO as secondary.
So ... I give MW benefit of the doubt, until it can be PROVEN, or I can be strongly pursuaded otherwise.
AIMHO only.
Dion
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