JP Morgan tops fees for 15th straight year

Catalyst Pharmaceuticals raised US$150m late on Thursday to help fund milestone payments on a newly approved Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy treatment it licensed from Swiss biotech Santhera Pharmaceuticals last year. Bank of America, Citigroup, Piper Sandler and Truist Securities led the sale of 10m Catalyst shares at US$15, a stiff 12.3% discount to last sale after marketing overnight. The shares slipped below issue early on Friday to US$14.64 in midday trading on Nasdaq. The biotech is using the proceeds to replenish its cash reserves after...

Opko Health secured US$200m late on Thursday from the sale of a five-year convertible bond, using the bulk of the money raised to repurchase an existing CB that is deeply out of the money and due to mature in early 2025. JP Morgan, as sole bookrunner, priced the new CB at a 3.75% coupon and 26.83% conversion premium, toward the investor-friendly ends of 3.25%–3.75% and 25%–30% talk marketed for one day on Thursday. The pharmaceuticals company was hardly in a position to negotiate. Opko shares tanked 39.5% on Thursday to just 92 cents, putting...

A long anticipated spike in distress and US corporate restructurings may have to wait a little while longer. S&P expects the US corporate default rate to hit 5%, expecting roughly 86 defaults by September 2024, up from 4.1% in September 2023. But it said the default rate could actually fall to 3.25% if the US economy continues to outperform and inflation continues to cool. Rising interest rates did stress companies that were already on the edge in 2023. Some banks were even caught offside, including Silicon Valley and First Republic. But many...

Having just secured US$100m from a collaboration, Voyager Therapeutics raised another US$100m late on Thursday from an overnight follow-on stock sale. Citigroup and Guggenheim Partners confidentially marketed the follow-on offering ahead of a broader overnight bookbuild. The banks placed 11.1m shares, including 3.3m in the form of pre-funded warrants, at US$9, the bottom of the US$9–$9.50 range marketed overnight and a 17% discount to the US$10.84 last sale price on Thursday. Early in Friday’s session, Voyager shares were trading at US$8.83,...

With the 42nd annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference creating a short-lived dead zone in biotech ECM this week, it was not surprising that some biotechs made pre-emptive strikes to raise capital. Kymera Therapeutics headed to this year's conference well-funded with an upsized US$275m from a wall-crossed overnight stock sale that drew heavy insider support. Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and TD Cowen priced 10.9m Kymera shares/pre-funded warrants at a US$25.25 fixed price, a 7.2% discount to Thursday's closing price. The banks were covered at launch...

CG Oncology filed last week for a Nasdaq IPO that would fully fund late-stage development of its new treatment for bladder cancer. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Cantor are joint bookrunners. The biotech is already fully enrolled for a Phase III trial of its drug and expects to report results by the end of this year. To help cover drug development costs so far, CG has raised US$307.9m privately, including US$105m from a Series F round in July. The Series F opened the door for crossover investors Foresite Capital and TCG Crossover to...

Dyne Therapeutics took full advantage of the bullish reception to its latest clinical trial by marketing what turned out to be a US$300m follow-on offering, nearly double the US$175m sum the muscular disease-focused biotech had sought to raise. Massive oversubscription allowed a syndicate of banks led by Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Jefferies and Stifel to price 17.2m shares late on Thursday at US$17.50, a seemingly sizable 9.8% discount to the US$19.39 last sale price. The banks confidentially marketed the equity raise on Wednesday, an...

US ECM activity is off to a busier start to the year than last year and the IPO pipeline is quickly expanding in an auspicious sign for 2024. The holiday-shortened first week of the year saw seven companies price US$1.4bn of follow-ons, mostly from the healthcare sector ahead of a large industry conference in the coming week. This was far busier than the opening week of 2023, which brought just one US$200m biotech follow-on and presaged an improved but still sub-par year for overall ECM issuance. December and January have also seen an uptick in...

BrightSpring Health Services has revived its hopes of going public, refiling on Tuesday for a Nasdaq IPO a little more than a year after putting its listing plans on ice. Jointly backed by KKR and Walgreens Boots Alliance, the in-home healthcare and pharmaceutical benefits provider plans to raise fresh capital alongside a concurrent mandatory convertible, giving it additional firepower to repay high-cost debt. Goldman Sachs, KKR Capital Markets, Jefferies, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Bank of America, Guggenheim Securities and Leerink Partners lead a...

There is a long list of reasons why Switzerland now has just one globally systemic bank rather than two, and the formal blame game is fully under way. No one emerges with much credit from Finma's 84-page breakdown of its supervision of Credit Suisse over the past 15 years. It’s a sorry tale, but there’s no mea culpa from the regulator for letting things slip. It’s more of a lament in which Finma goes to great lengths to outline all the advice it gave and actions it took to try to get its troubled charge back on track, especially in the last...

UK specialist lender LendInvest has sold its non-risk retention residual economic interest in Mortimer BTL 2023-1, a securitisation of buy-to-let mortgages it priced last year, for a net consideration of £5m. Citi's secondary trading desk managed the sale process and purchase for onward sale. The transaction will move about £392m of loans and advances off LendInvest's balance sheet and generate a net pre-tax gain of about £12.1m, the company said. "We are delighted to have successfully completed this sale, which will strengthen our balance...

Together Financial Services has mandated four banks for the first specialist UK RMBS of the year following a successful reopening of the market by high street lenders Santander and Lloyds, while Companies House filings and comments from ABS bankers suggest that more may be in the works in the coming weeks. BNP Paribas, Citi (co-arrangers), HSBC and NatWest Markets are joint lead managers for Together's forthcoming transaction, Together Asset Backed Securitisation 2024-2nd1, which will be backed by a portfolio of second-lien residential mortgage...