March 3, 2015
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
San Francisco-based Serenus Biotherapeutics, Inc. announced today that it had inked a deal with Irish firm Malin Corporation plc that would pull in $43 million.
Malin will buy a 41 percent stake in Serenus for $18 million. Various milestones will let Malin invest another $25 million, which would bring its stake in Serenus up to 76 percent. In addition, Serenus’s board will evaluate whether to restructure the company so its domicile is in Ireland.
Serenus will use the funding for operational development and look for partners for commercialization deals. It also will build out its late-stage clinical program and supply chain network. The primary focus is on the African market.
“Africans have an appetite for newer technologies to improve health. Serenus intends to fill this need by being the bridge between the continent’s unmet medical needs and the opportunity for global companies to enter a largely untapped and fertile commercial market,” said Menghis Bairu, founder, chief executive officer and president of Serenus in a statement. “This transaction not only provides us with capital to accelerate the realization of our vision for the company, but also with talent and insight from accomplished global biopharmaceutical veterans and access to novel products through their extensive industry relationships to help us build a company with a lasting impact on the health of people in Africa.”
In June 2014, Serenus announced a focus on the sub-Saharan Africa market, which is unusual. Most U.S. pharmaceutical companies focus on the U.S. market, followed by Europe and Japan. Analysts, however, suggest that Africa is a wide open market.
“African markets are gaining increased attention from international pharmaceutical companies,” said Mark Holis, a health care analyst with HIS Global Insight in a statement, “as rising affluence and economic growth is driving demand for high-quality pharmaceuticals.”
“There is no reason for people in sub-Saharan Africa to wait for drugs to be off-patent before accessing all this medicine we are developing in the Western world,” said Bairu in a statement. The company has an office in South Africa and is setting up teams in West and East Africa.
As part of the deal, former Elan Corp head Kelly Martin, a director with Malin Corp. will join Serenus’s board of directors as chairman. Bairu was chief medical officer of Elan when Martin was its chief executive officer.
Bairu is originally from the East African country of Eritrea. He founded Serenus in 2014 with the intention of focusing on the African market. “Over time, you see the evolution of African countries and you see diseases shifting,” said Bairu in a statement. “I want to change that. We have to change that.”
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Last week controversy erupted over the compensation package for Sanofi’s new CEO, Olivier Brandicourt, with several French government officials decrying the amount, calling it “incomprehensible.” Brandicourt could walk off with as much as $4.5 million in a “golden handshake” payment in addition to making $4.76 million a year. That base figure is comprised by a fixed annual salary of $1.36 million a year, which is supplemented by a performance-related bonus of between 150 to 250 percent, as well as stock options and performance shares.
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