“I want to offer you a wonderful alternative to an IPO on the stock market: merge with a US public company,” said Biosante Pharmaceuticals vice chairman, president and CEO Stephen M. Simes at the ISLI-Biomed 2007 conference in Tel Aviv, organized by Israel Life Sciences Industry.
“An American company generally has an experienced management, ties with local investors, and products that can complement yours. Together, it would be possible to build more extensive business that will give the company a boost in terms of the type of investors interested in it.”
It soon became clear that the US company that Simes was proposing merging with was his own - BioSante Pharmaceuticals Inc. (AMEX: BPA). “I invite Israeli companies to merge with us,” he told “Globes”. “We’ve been thinking for a long time about licensing the products of Israeli companies, and we recently began thinking - why not a merger? We’re already in talks with two or three possible companies, but we’re open to proposals from anyone who can demonstrate products that are synergetic with ours.”
Sims added, “We considered in the past to list for trading on the TASE. If we merge with an Israeli company, we’ll definitely reconsider this.”
Biosante has a market cap of $175 million. Sims is married to an Israeli, and Israeli investors, including Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Nasdaq: TEVA; TASE: TEVA), owns a fifth of the company’s share capital. The company’s most advanced product is a treatment for menopausal symptoms, which the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved, but which does not yet have substantial sales.
Biosante is pinning great hopes on LibiGel, a transdermal bioidentical testosterone gel, which is in Phase III development for the treatment of female sexual dysfunction.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on June 7, 2007
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