"than relatively insignificant administrative costs associated with concurrent negotiations of the same"

While these numbers aren't updated to the last quarter, for the first 70 licenses or so, the PDS operating expenses, ie the "adminstrative costs" totalled over $47M. Granted that included outside lawyer fees (probably in the $12 to $15M range based on the J3 run-up extrapolation) as well as Alliacense costs, but that's on average $670K per license. Even if you discount that by one-third, when you consider the averge license fee is about $4.14M, we're talking roughly 10% of the license fee. I don't characterize that amount as insignificant.

If 10% of that 10% were "massaged" to PDS' ledger, especially in light of your assertion that TPL now owns 2 of the other portfolios outright, that could be close to a half a million dollars for the 9 or 10 joint clients or even more if you include the clients who were negotiated with, but didn't sign.

Bottom line is these should be and should have always been separate processes, and FULLY audited to assure no crossovers. And they should also be set up to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, especially when you consider PTSC is a PUBLIC company, and TPL is private.