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. 

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER