I don't think any conclusions can be drawn about t

I don't think any conclusions can be drawn about the status of any potential partnership, merely based on hiring him. Leo has been handling a tremendous workload. The bashers have been, well let me put it politely, "complaining" about not having a big enough staff to move things forward. What if Leo has been searching for many months for someone who is the right fit for the company, and they finally found this guy? They're not going to say, "oh wait, we're not going to bring you on board now" dependent on the status of anything that's going on with the company. Nor would they have hired a less suitable candidate who was available earlier.

As far as progress of any possible negotiations, this is a non-meaningful data point. We have absolutely NO way of knowing where any such negotiations might be.