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Week in Review: 3SBio Files for $500 Million IPO in Hong Kong

publication date: Feb 21, 2015
 | 
author/source: Richard Daverman, PhD

Deals and Financings

After two years as a private company, 3SBio of Shenyang filed to IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (see story). According to media reports, the company will complete a $400-$500 million initial offering in Q2. 3SBio was taken private in 2013 by its CEO, Lou Jing, and CITIC Private Equity for $370 million. Although the company remains dependent upon revenues from its two mainstay products, EPIAO and TPIAO, 3SBio has been an active dealmaker, and it now has a pipeline of 20 products in development, of which 14 are being developed as China Class I New Drugs. 

Shanghai Fosun Pharma (SHA: 600196; HK: 02196) is rumored to be in talks to acquire Lumenis Ltd. (NSDQ: LMNS), an Israeli medical device company (see story). Fosun is reportedly willing to pay $480 million for Lumenis, which makes laser, pulsed light and RF frequency devices for aesthetic uses as well as other minimally invasive procedures. In 2013, Fosun paid $240 million for another Israeli aesthetic device company, Alma Lasers. According to reports, Fosun plans to merge the two companies into one. 

WuXi PharmaTech (NYSE: WX) has borrowed $165 million from a consortium of banks in Asia to expand into new businesses (see story). As one project for the capital, WuXi wants to extend its recently acquired personalized medicine diagnostic capabilities to hospitals in China. Currently, WuXi is spending $340 million in already announced major cap-ex projects (2014-16), and it has spent $100 million to acquire genomics companies in the last six months. On September 30, 2014, it reported cash of $381 million. 

Rainbow Medical, an Israeli medical device incubator, raised $25 million from China investors and opened a Shanghai office that is tasked with promoting strategic collaborations in China (see story). At present, Rainbow is developing a portfolio of 12 medical device companies, each of which sprung from a device invented by Yossi Gross, one of Rainbow's co-founders. Between 1990 and 2007, Mr. Gross launched 27 medical device companies based on his inventions. 

Crown Bioscience, a US-China preclinical CRO with a focus on oncology, added to its offerings by acquiring diagnostic oncology assets from Molecular Response of San Diego (see story). Crown bought MRL’s PDX bank of several hundred established models for in vivo pharmacology services along with several other models under development. It also acquired access to 8,000 viable human tumors for the next two years. And Crown will take over MRL’s San Diego-based PDX service operations, which will become a Crown global center of excellence for Translational Oncology. The price was not disclosed. 

Featured Companies

Nuance Biotech, a Shanghai-based startup, has developed an unusual business model. As Mark Lotter, the company's founder and CEO, told ChinaBio® Today in an exclusive interview, Nuance plans to in-license and develop drugs in both China and South Africa (see story). The countries are similar in many ways, explains Lotter, but South Africa's population is more diverse, which offers unique opportunities. Nuance will in-license drugs in all stages of development, from market-ready to pre-clinical. The company, which will soon begin fund raising, will attend the April ChinaBio® Partnership Forum in Shanghai to make its story better known. 

Disclosure: none.


 

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