Post by veritasfiliatemporis on Jun 23, 2019 4:21:31 GMT -5
Michael Castagna closed the deal on Kendall after he became CEO and, while he has never publicly taken all the credit, he also never refuted the belief the the hiring of our reputable CMO was all his idea (to his credit).
Pfeffer hired Castagna and was targeting Dr. Kendall. So how did Castagna wind up becoming CEO? I believe that was largely maneuvered by Castagna, himself, convincing the Mann Group, who was tight with the Board of Directors, that he was more qualified than Matt to be CEO.
My opinion as a shareholder, after a couple years of evaluating his performance, is that Castagna is not qualified to be CEO. He throws a great curve ball, but is unable to get the ball across the plate. Do you think Pfeffer couldn't have secured deals with Brazil and India (by the way, if you haven't noticed, Cipla is currently in a severe tailspin in drug sales and is on the verge of total collapse). Pfeffer would have got China, Mexico and Europe.
IMO, castagna took advantage of the Mann family to his advantage and hoped to "learn on the fly" once he replaced Pfeffer. His decision to reward himself and the team he put together seems clearly based on the hope securing the loyalty of his team rather than rewarding them for performance.
I stop here by simply saying that Alfred Mann was a legend, Hakan Edstrom was a brilliant product developer and Matthew Pfeffer was 100% committed to bring Al Mann's vision to reality. As CEO, he hired excellent people and was executing his plan to hire more when Castagna made his bold move against Pfeffer.
I have the the utmost respect for the first three CEOs. I've lost all respect for Michael Castagna. In my opinion he will either destroy this company or, under his inept leadership, the company will be sold for a fraction of its value.
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Below is VDEX response to Mnholdem
Mnholdem to your point…
The Abu Dahbi deal was started with Matt Pfeffer.
Matt told us he was getting constant pressure from MC and Joe Saldadha(at the time was VP Marketing & Business Development) and others, not to do the deal.
Their reason was repeated to us daily…
MNKD had been approached by, literally, over a hundred different parties that had brought them deals but none had valid partners.
We had been to Abu Dhabi, met with our partners, The Minister of Heath, etc… we knew what we had and we persisted with the same passion that fuels us every day.
Some important details happened early on so I’m going back to the beginning.
We (Bill, myself and our two ME partners)the “Alis”) called and set up a meeting and met with Mike Castagna for dinner at his favorite Italian restaurant near his house.
There, we spoke about the Abu Dhabi deal. It ‘s the only reason we were there. It’s the only reason we would have brought our ME partners.
We were feeling Mike out about the possibility of brokering a viable deal with MNKD.
Two things about that night I won’t forget.
First, is Brembo brakes that I had on my Audi and Mike was a fan of them as they are often used by Ferrari of which he is a fan or at least was.
Second, is that I clearly remember thinking how reckless it was for the CCO of MNKD to be openly disparaging and speaking of replacing his CEO to Bill and myself (who he had only met once or twice before) and the Alis whom he had never met before.
I don’t know if we were just being humored so Mike could campaign for the CEO position over a free dinner but regarding the deal, we were mostly encouraged by what we heard and we continued to move forward after that dinner.
And then there was a second meeting regarding Abu Dhabi with Mike Castagna.
We(Bill, myself, & the Alis) met near the airport at the Westin before Mike’s flight and this time we met Joe Saldanha. Joe had made his fortune in distribution throughout the ME and was only with MNKD as a favor to Al Mann. They were friends and Al had asked him to see Afrezza across the goal line.
That was Joe’s intention, to help Al make Afrezza a success.
That night, it seemed he was there to talk us down and open our eyes to what it is to have truly valid partners. To me, it seemed as though it was more about showing us why it probably wouldn’t work as opposed to finding ways to make something work.
Hundreds had tried and none had what was needed… valid partners.
We hadn’t heard anything that precluded us from getting this deal done.
If we had what it took, we could get it done.
We took a team to Abu Dhabi where we met our contacts, the Minister of Health, the two premier hospitals in the rejoin where we demonstrated Afrezza’s efficacy. We had a 5000-10,000 patient, 9mo study set up with the $2.5B Cleveland Clinic with the head of Endocrinology. The study was to commence upon the approval of Afrezza, which was being fast-tracked by the Minister of Health due to his relationship with our Royal contacts.
Sound to good to be true?
There is much more we could say about how that deal was going to change the world’s opinion of Afrezza. VDEX was there with it’s intimate knowledge of the use of Afrezza to see that it was used correctly and to it’s fullest potential. The study at the Cleveland Clinic alone would have made the world stand up and notice Afrezza.
That was 2 ½ years ago.
We made our way back to the states and began working out the details with then CEO Matt Pfeffer.
The deal was extremely compelling to Matt but MC, Joe Saldanha and others were telling him don’t do it! They are wasting your time. Their contacts are no good!
We had initially been concerned about sharing our contacts with MNKD because we didn’t want anyone trying to go around us and cut us out of the deal. At this point however, we were confident that after having met with management several times, documentation and communications regarding our position in the deal, that we decided we could safely share our contacts with MNKD so as to be vetted.
Joe Saldanha (Joe had made his fortune in distribution throughout the ME and he knew everyone that was anyone in the region) vetted our contacts and did a complete 180.
Joe said that our contacts were legit and our distributor was “first rate”.
He told us that he would help in any way he could, that he was available for phone calls to the ME at any hour of the night and that when it came to the NEXT market in the region, he could help make introductions etc…
So, the one and only issue was now not an issue.
Our Partners were Valid. “First Rate”
Others were still telling Matt P. not to do it. He told us how they kept telling him it was not a good deal. We persisted.
Matt bravely and wisely agreed to move ahead with our deal in spite of the pressure from others not to. It made sense to him and Joe and as CEO he made the tuff call.
Matt sent the FDA Dossier (a massive file comprised of millions of pages necessary for approval) to the UAE and we were officially moving. We had been discussing pricing, volume, etc and were now waiting for MNKD to give us their final pricing. Matt P. gave us pricing within $0.10 of the what would be the actual price but needed to do a little more calculating before they felt comfortable setting the cost.
We were at the finish line.
With the dossier in the hands of the distributor, we waited for their reply. It had been a day or two since we had spoken to Matt and we called to check on things.
To our semi -surprise Matt was out and Mike Castagna was in as CEO.
We called and congratulated MC for his new post and spoke of the deal and where we were at etc…
It was either the Minister of Health or our distributor that needed a document so we requested the doc from MC and he said he would send it, …and he said he would, …….and he said he would ……. and he never did….. and Ramadan came ….. and our contacts lost faith in us to do what we had said we could do…..and the summer months hit and we were dead in the UAE for the time being.
You don’t have ………valid partners
That was the premise upon which we were dismissed, held off, etc….
With hundreds of offers and no valid partners, I understand some of MNKD’s initial reaction to yet another gung ho applicant.
This was very different
Joe Saldanha, the very man who was at the front of the line to first speak to us about legit contacts and reputable distributors, upon vetting us, found our contacts to be legit and our distributor to be “First Rate”.
Joe did a 180.
Again…
He told us that he would help in any way he could, that he was available for phone calls to the ME at any hour of the night and that when it came to the NEXT market in the region, he could help make introductions etc…
Joe was there for AL.
Joe was there to see Afrezza to success.
Joe saw us/the deal as a meaningful and credible way forward.
Joe expected more deals from us and he wanted to help….Al.
“I wasn’t part of that deal discussion and walked away when I became CEO bc we weren’t confident there were any meaningful financial terms and didn’t feel comfortable with players involved.
Mike Castagna
6/22/19
I do want to thank Mike for giving me license to respond to his “story”.
Mike killed the deal as CEO
Joe quit 1 month later
SDB
Castagna, italian restaurant, Brembo brakes, Ferrari, you forget the pizza mafia and mandolino stuff.. I don't know the truth but I smell something I don't like...🤔