University of Pennsylvania spinout Verismo Therapeutics is being acquired by South Korea-based HLB Group, which already owns an almost 50 percent stake in the firm, writes John George for the Philadelphia Business Journal.
“We started out as a very small company,” said Verismo Therapeutics CEO Bryan Kim, who co-founded the company with two other Penn researchers more than four years ago. “That’s how we started to build a relationship. They continued to invest and became our major shareholder and visited us many, many times. They really liked the company and wanted us to be able to continue to develop our pipeline.”
Acquisition talks started about nine months ago, culminating in the agreement that was reached in December.
HLB Group’s business model is to eventually become the full owner of the promising companies in its investment portfolio. With a market cap of almost $7 billion, HLB is one of South Korea’s largest life sciences companies. In fact, it is the parent company to 55 firms overall.
To finalize its acquisition of Verismo, HLB issued $71 million in new shares of HLB Innovation, which provided Verismo with a post-merger valuation of close to $160 million.
Read more about Verismo Therapeutics and its acquisition in the Philadelphia Business Journal.
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