" What are all these entities seeing in the ZEN graphite that is making them hesitate to step forward?"

They are waiting for the sp to come down, for people to get bored and forget their expectations, and perhaps the big market crash to put everyone off of their game. It's been done before...it will be done again. ND agreements are just keeping people in the dark with expectation. In the mean time it's easy to see what it's doing to the sp. I don't really think the BOD are particularly too worried about a certain group of investors. We are now past the point that people thought we would never see and into the grey area of uncertainty. They could keep this game up for another year or more very easily. There are most certainly the realities of doing business however AE mislead people when he said "I'll be surprised if Zen is still around this time next year." or words to that effect. That was well more than a year ago if I'm not mistaken. Please correct if needed. I wonder what his words would be now?