InterWest News
Staged Acquisition Turns Into Big Hit
Wall Street Journal: Venture Capital Dispatch
Scott Austin
8 January 2010
It's All Been Staged - Here's a deal that will give "staged acquisitions" a good name: More than two years after MGI Pharma Inc. paid $45 million for access to a drug developed by venture-backed biotech company AkaRx, MGI's now-parent company, Eisai, is paying $255 million to complete a staged acquisition of AkaRx. The $300 million exit is a nice one for AkaRx's patient venture backers InterWest Partners and Sutter Hill Ventures, which each owned about a third of AkaRx after investing $26 million, VentureWire reports. Members of the AkaRx management team since formed a new company backed by InterWest and Sutter Hill, Drais Pharmaceuticals, which is developing oncology drugs. "We humbly think we started a trend of risk-sharing deals," InterWest General Partner Nina Kjellson tells VentureWire.
