No really - laughter is the best medicine. Don’t you feel much better after following along with the yoga exercises in the video? Well after reading this latest entry - Market pummels Medicure - Huge sell-off of firm’s stock as study results disappointby Freep star business reporter Martin (’Press Release’) Cash you’ll be in shape to be ROTFLMAO (rolling on the floor laughing my arse off), and it won’t require any recreational or medical pharmaceuticals.
Of course being a reporter has never stopped Cash from carrying on as if he was a columnist throwing his opinions into the mix, but actually that’s the start of the humour.
“Close to 26 million Medicure shares changed hands Monday, driving the price down from 80 cents at the start of the day to 11.5 cents. When the smoke cleared, Medicure shareholders lost more in one day of trading — $89 million — than the 34,000 Crocus shareholders have lost ($67.5 million) since that fund ceased trading in December 2004.”
It’s funny Cash should mention Crocus since there’s quite a few of his Freep stories about Medicure in the Crocus news release archives. I also say funny because while he compares the one day loss to the total loss to Crocus shareholders, much of it apparently due to over valuations, he fails to mention that the Crocus Receiver in his latest court report shows an investment of $850,000 in Medicure shares at the end of 2007.
What this effective translates into is an additional loss on the order of turning that $850,000 in shares into $122,000 in shares over and above the numbers Cash is talking about. Now don’t be scratching your head over who to be laughing at - Cash, the Receiever, the Court (because it’s under the Court’s supervision Holmes operates the Crocus Fund), or is it the Manitoba Securities Commision, because they asked the Court to put the Fund in receivership. Never mind. Just have a good belly laugh at the whole works, they all deserve to be laughed at.
Oh but we’re not done yet. The story then goes on to cite the words of the head man at Biotech.
Despite words to the contrary from Medicure’s ever-optimistic co-founder and CEO Albert Friesen, the company’s ability to continue to operate as a drug-discovery operation is likely severely curtailed. Not only that, but the repercussions in the small-but-growing Winnipeg biotech scene may be felt for some time to come.
“When big money is made it makes people bullish,” said one longtime business-development executive in Winnipeg. “If a lot of folks take a bath on a biotech investment it makes others skittish to do it.”
Now where have we seen that name - Albert Friesen before? Well aside from another Crocus investment in a business called Genesys Venture Inc. to the tune of a $100,00 promissory note and another $125,000 in shares, and on the list of Dipper Doer’s Economic Advisory Committee it also happens to show up connected to the Manitoba Science and Technology Fund which happens to be in hock to Crocus for roughly $2.4 million.
Come on yuk it up. Dipper Doer along with his friends, as well as anyone ever connected to Crocus, are starting to look more and more like the bunch on the raft circling the toilet bowl in the Tidy Bowl commercials, and that’s hillarious. So now we come to the last two paragraph’s of Cash’s story.
Garold Breit, the director of the University of Manitoba technology transfer office, agreed that since Medicure was able to develop MC-1 as far along as it did, it gave Winnipeg a more favourable profile among the investment communities in places like New York, Toronto and San Francisco.
“We know this happens every day in every major city in North America,” said Breit. “But when you add it to the other things we have seen (including the collapse of Crocus and the dearth of venture capital) when one of our brightest lights loses some of it lustre it could have an impact.”
Could have an impact. Naw. I’m sure the movers and shakers in major cities understand exactly what the failure of Crocus was all about and it just gave them something else to laugh about besides “Spirited Energy‘. After all the locals got smart real fast and stopped providing any money for venture capital, and they’re at least as smart as folks from the big cities.
Nope, we might as well join everyone else in North America that’s laughing at some of the business people and government in this province and get some enjoyment out of it. After all it’s cheaper than drugs and a hell of a lot safer - for both the heart and wallet.
The clock’s ticking on your legacy Gary, think you can round up a few more million in taxpayer funded gifts to this sector of the economy without anyone noticing?
