US House keeps heat on J&J recalls as top exec retires
This article was originally published in SRA
Executive Summary
A committee in the US House of Representatives has disclosed plans to hold a hearing on 30 September to once again interrogate Johnson & Johnson executives about the massive recall earlier this year of 136 million bottles of children's over-the-counter medicines, due to quality control issues1,2. Just hours later, J&J announced that the company's long-time senior executive in charge of its consumer group, Colleen Goggins, would be retiring next March3.
You may also be interested in...
ChemoCentryx cuts price to get $45M IPO away
ChemoCentryx has successfully completed its initial public offering on Nasdaq, raising $45 million to help support its multiple R&D programmes. It sold 4.5 million shares at $10, a somewhat less ambitious debut than it had originally planned in January when it wanted to sell four million shares at $14-$16. The reduced offer is a sign of the challenging nature of the IPO market, but ChemoCentryx's assessment of its own worth was at least closer to the market’s assessment that Cempra which got its IPO away on 6 February at valuation that was less than two-thirds of that implied by its initial prospectus (scripintelligence.com, 7 February 2012).
Ampio raises $16.9M as it advances PhIII premature ejaculation drug
Ampio Pharmaceuticals, a development-stage company, initially raised $15 million which was boosted to $16.9 million by the exercise of overallotments by brokers. The shares were offered at $3.25, an 8.5% discount to the closing price of $3.66 on 12 July. The market pushed them down slightly further to 3.21 on 13 July.
Money talks: Verastem leverages IPO to build cancer stem cell pipeline
Verastem, a cancer stem cells startup, has moved quickly to build its pipeline just five months after an initial public offering. Management at the Cambridge, Massachusetts firm believes that recent moves have accelerated Verastem's clinical development plans by a year.