In the lat­est re­verse merg­er, Vi­en­na's Ar­sa­nis serves as ve­hi­cle for X4 Phar­ma's Nas­daq list­ing

Con­sid­er this: a small biotech pins its hopes on its lead pro­gram, which for what­ev­er rea­son lat­er fails. Then comes along a pri­vate play­er look­ing for a sim­pler, quick­er and cheap­er path to a pub­lic list­ing, by part­ly or ful­ly swal­low­ing the bat­tered com­pa­ny and pro­vid­ing its in­vestors a mi­nor­i­ty share of the merged en­ti­ty as some­thing of a con­so­la­tion prize. Sound fa­mil­iar? It should.

In re­cent months, there have been at least three re­verse merg­ers, in the af­ter­math of dis­ap­point­ments that have cratered the list­ed com­pa­ny’s stock. On Tues­day, Vi­en­na-based Ar­sa­nis $ASNS — which aban­doned its S. au­reus pneu­mo­nia ther­a­py this June af­ter it failed to pass muster in an mid-stage tri­al in­ter­im analy­sis — agreed to be the ve­hi­cle for Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts-based X4 Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to list on the Nas­daq.

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