Roivan­t's Vivek Ra­maswamy is clos­ing in on a $3B cash deal to sell con­trol of 5 Vants — plus — to Sum­it­o­mo Dainip­pon

Roivant chief Vivek Ra­maswamy is in the fi­nal stages of sell­ing the um­brel­la biotech com­pa­ny’s own­er­ship stake in a group of Vant star­tups to Sum­it­o­mo Dainip­pon Phar­ma for $3 bil­lion up­front. 

Ra­maswamy tells me that the broad-rang­ing deal — out­lined in a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing — in­cludes the con­trol­ling stake in 5 of his biotechs, a 10% stake in Roivant, ac­cess to the tech plat­forms he’s been build­ing and an op­tion to buy up an­oth­er 6 of his star­tups as they work through their new al­liance. Each new se­lec­tion will trig­ger an un­spec­i­fied pay­out.

A for­mal agree­ment is be­ing ham­mered out now, with the fi­nal deal ex­pect­ed to be struck at the end of Oc­to­ber. The rea­son they’re an­nounc­ing the deal now is to sat­is­fy rules gov­ern­ing pub­lic com­pa­nies in Japan.

The ac­qui­si­tion deal will give the Japan­ese phar­ma com­pa­ny con­trol of My­ovant Sci­ences (women’s health and prostate can­cer), Urovant Sci­ences (uri­nary dis­eases), En­zy­vant Ther­a­peu­tics (pe­di­atric rare dis­eases), Al­ta­vant Sci­ences (res­pi­ra­to­ry rare dis­eases), and one ad­di­tion­al com­pa­ny not yet iden­ti­fied. 

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