A Mer­ck part­ner is sucked in­to the fi­nan­cial quag­mire as key lender calls in a note

An­oth­er biotech stand­ing on shaky fi­nan­cial legs has fall­en vic­tim to the bears.

Mer­ck part­ner 4D Phar­ma has re­port­ed that a key lender, Ox­ford Fi­nance, shoved the UK com­pa­ny in­to ad­min­is­tra­tion af­ter call­ing in a $14 mil­lion loan they couldn’t im­me­di­ate­ly make good on. Trad­ing in their stock was halt­ed with a mar­ket cap that had fall­en to a mere £30 mil­lion.

“De­spite the very dif­fi­cult pre­vail­ing mar­ket con­di­tions,” 4D re­port­ed on Fri­day, the biotech had been mak­ing progress on find­ing some new fi­nanc­ing and turned to Ox­ford with an al­ter­na­tive late on Thurs­day and then again Fri­day morn­ing.

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