News

Labco, a French diagnostics company with 160 laboratories spread over seven countries, is making an initial public offering on its shares on the Euronext Paris stock exchange and a simultaneous secondary offering.

An initial public offering of shares in the Belgium-based molecular diagnostics company, Biocartis Group NV, raised €100 million on Euronext Brussels in late April, making it one of the largest life science offerings on a European stock market this year.

Newron Pharmaceuticals SpA, which has an approved drug for Parkinson’s disease, has raised CHF 24.3 million (€23.6 million) in a private share placement to accelerate the development of its pipeline of candidate treatments for diseases of the central nervous system.

The Clinigen Group Plc, a specialty pharmaceutical company, successfully raised £135 million in late April to finance its £225 million acquisition of Idis Group Holdings Ltd, a supplier of unlicensed medicines to the hospital market.

Sanofi SA reported sales of €8.8 billion in the first quarter, up by 12.3% from a year earlier on strong sales of veterinary drugs and medicines from the company’s Genzyme unit. Diabetes product sales however fell by 3.2% on a decline in sales for Lantus.

Shire Plc has highlighted the growth of its commercial and clinical-stage portfolios in a report on the 2015 first quarter, which showed an 11% rise in revenue to $1.49 billion, and a 55% rise in operating income to $475 million.

Novo Nordisk A/S, which claims 27% of the global market for diabetes care, reported a 24% increase in sales in the 2015 first quarter to DKK 25.2 billion (€3.4 billion) while its operating profit soared by 73% to DKK 13.9 billion.

Crispr Therapeutics AG of Basel, Switzerland and Cambridge, Massachusetts has raised an additional $64 million in venture capital to progress its gene-editing technology towards the development of new medicines. The financing was led by SR One, the venture capital arm of GlaxoSmithKline Plc, and Celgene Corp.

GW Pharmaceuticals Plc, a developer of cannabinoid medicines, is raising $179.2 million through a share offering on the Nasdaq exchange in a continuation of a trend in which European pharmaceutical companies increasingly finance themselves in the US.

Nordic Nanovector ASA, which is developing a radio-immunotherapy for non-Hodgkin lymphomas, has raised a NOK 575 million (€68.4 million) in an initial public offering of its shares on the Oslo Stock Exchange. ABG Sundal Collier Norge ASA and DBN ASA led the syndicate.