Tony Coles, Cerevel Therapeutics CEO

Adding $445M, Tony Coles and his big Pfiz­er neu­ro spin­out hitch a ride to Wall Street on Per­cep­tive’s SPAC

Two years ago, af­ter Pfiz­er abrupt­ly shut down its en­tire neu­ro­science di­vi­sion, Bain Cap­i­tal bet $350 mil­lion that those as­sets were still worth some­thing and pack­aged them in­to a new biotech: Cerev­el Ther­a­peu­tics. A year lat­er, they got sea­soned ex­ec­u­tive Tony Coles, who had re­cent­ly jumped back in­to the C-suite of an­oth­er neu­ro­science start­up, to run the com­pa­ny.

Now Coles is steer­ing Cerev­el pub­lic, in what he says is the largest ever trans­ac­tion of its kind. Cerev­el has agreed to merge with Per­cep­tive Ad­vi­sors’ spe­cial­ty ac­qui­si­tion com­pa­ny ARYA II. Be­tween the rough­ly $125 mil­lion Per­cep­tive raised through ARYA and an ad­di­tion­al in­vest­ment of $320 mil­lion Bain Cap­i­tal, Per­cep­tive and — yes, re­al­ly — Pfiz­er, among oth­ers, Cerev­el will now move for­ward with an added $445 mil­lion in its cof­fers.

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