Posted on 07/23/2023 1:21:42 PM PDT by JayGalt
Ramaswamy's Bermuda-based company, Axovant Sciences, had been formed only eight months earlier, but here it was raising $360 million to develop an Alzheimer's drug that had been all but abandoned by giant pharma GlaxoSmithKline.
On the first day of trading the stock almost doubled, giving Axovant a market capitalization of nearly $3 billion. Considering that Ramaswamy had persuaded Glaxo to part with the unproven remedy for a mere $5 million up front, the newlyweds were ecstatic, as was a veritable wedding party of hedge fund pals who had followed Ramaswamy into the stock.
Yet as quickly as it started, the honeymoon was over. Why would Glaxo sell off a promising drug for so little? critics asked. And how could a company with ten employees, two of whom were Ramaswamy's mother and brother, be worth so much? Experts, analysts and the collective blogosphere quickly piled on, and Axovant's shares went into free fall. By early September they were trading 12% below the IPO price.
Using a pharmaceutical holding company he formed last year, Roivant Sciences, Ramaswamy hopes to spin out dozens of companies, much as he did with Axovant. "This will be the highest return on investment endeavor ever taken up in the pharmaceutical industry," he boasts. "It will be a pipeline every bit as deep and diverse as the most promising pharma company in the world but with a capital efficiency that is unprecedented."
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
An interesting story about your Mom. My grandfather believed the same difference defined Democrats & Republicans.
As in all things, it is the honor and morality of a person that counts not the party since both hold corrupt and self serving individuals.
That being said, to embrace the Democrat party platform and methods, is to completely shed honor & morality.
Me too.
Share holders of Roivant Sciences, Ltd are enjoying an increasingly negative string of negative income years and every increasing operating costs.
Why does this feel like a chapter from a book called PONZI?
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ROIV/financials?p=ROIV
A wonderful strategy to buy orphan drugs that big pharma can’t figure out how to promote for serious though obscure maladies with so few victims that there is not a large enough market to make money without charging obscene prices that the market will not bear. That is not unless you can lobby successfully to persuade Medicare to cover them, such as Aduhelm or Leqembi, both of which cost over $28,000 per year. No, Alzheimer’s is hardly obscure easily tugging at the heart strings of the desperate and the greed of many.
‘In the case of Aduhelm, the anticipation of substantially higher Medicare Part B spending due to coverage of that drug contributed to a 15% jump in the Part B premium between 2021 and 2022, an increase substantially above the norm.”
My Momma died with Alzheimer’s over a period of nearly 10 years. She was medically fine at nearly 92 except she lost the ability to eat, drink or function in addition to the slow and inexorable loss of memory. Prolonging this agony by merely slowing it is hardly a good thing. I think most of us who have lived with it would agree.
To be sure, Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease that I would not wish on any victim or family. I’ll forego the horrible speculation I have felt wondering if the sufferers are conscious of their disease in ways that comatose patients attempt to scream to be heard about the sounds and thoughts of others they hear. A living nightmare in something like hell.
They didn’t know any better. They were sold the lie that Roosevelt saved them from the Depression. For some, he did and they believed in it their whole lives. My late Dad did not though he lived the whole miserable mess of the Depression leaving home at 13, “because there was not enough to go around” as he said and drifted living a hard life until the Navy and then growing up even faster at war.
Most don’t know now or ever had any idea then that belt tightening, such as was done in the UK at that time, brought the UK out of the Depression much faster than us. By the time the war started they were up and running. Arguments, few objective, will rage as to what monetary and social policy actually worked. The proof to me is that the UK was on a successful manufacturing war footing by ‘38 lacking only in raw materials and volume and needing help. The war saved Roosevelt from failure of his policies of the New Deal. I believe that strongly.
we became the Arsenal of Democracy largely due to the 1941 efforts of a died in the wool repooblican industrialist named William Knudsen singled out and hired by Roosevelt in about May of that year. Knudsen almost single handedly put us on a war manufacturing footing. After he did that he was stabbed in the back by Roosevelt and the New Dealers who fired him in a radio announcement and replaced him with one of their own. It took decades for the victor written history to become truth.
Always remember that, the victors write the history and they write it to suit their purposes.
The smarm gives this away as hit piece it is.
Interesting article. Alzheimers is a terrible disease. When someone you love is suffering money is secondary to the family unless they can’t afford the cost. When society bears the cost it is a cruel dilemma.
When we were shedding red tape, unnecessary regulations, bringing industry back to the USA and becoming a fuel exporter there was more money for healthcare.
Now that Biden has hollowed out America there is a need for triage. The pharmaceutical industry is unregulated but in many cases the American people are the end payor. Seeing Vivek’s manipulation of the system where billions are scattered in pursuit of vague possibilities and money is syphoned despite failure I believe we must do better.
NIH is completely corrupt spending billions on unnecessary & bizarre research much benefiting foreign countries, not to mention the deaths due to illegal gain of function studies paid for under Fauci & others. If NIH functioned as it was intended it could support basic research of the kind that has led to advances in science.
The freewheeling method going on at present guarantees that the connected will enrich themselves at the expense of the American people. There needs to be discipline in the system but it will be difficult to introduce. People like Vivek would have no motivation to introduce such discipline. Trump did take on Pharmy to lower insulin prices. Biden quickly retreated. Trump has shown recognition of the issue and after his experiences w/Fauci and the FDA he may be the one to start reigning in the abuses of the present system.
Translation?
Smarmy and sarcastic writing.
Interesting. This smarmy article is from 2015. Thanks for pointing that out.
It obviously was not a hit piece written regarding the current presidential race.
Thanks for pointing out the date.
ingratiating and wheedling in a way that is perceived as insincere or excessive.
“a smarmy, unctuous reply”
The articles were written by multiple authors over a 7 year period. They mark the establishment of a main Vivek company and how it performed and evolved. Satellite companies were formed and in the end all of the successive companies including the final company was dissolved.
Billions were spent on the network of companies & investors lost their money. Then there is the issue of woke investing by large companies which Vivek is pressing. One of the articles outlines that the problem doesn’t exist but that Vivek can get rich if he can manipulate the perception and the money will come from pension fund returns.
What part is smarmy?
Thank you.
It was difficult to reflect all the information in an concise manner because so many companies were started and had their names changed, were spun off and went broke. I posted multiple articles covering the years of the companies’ history.
2015 Axovant Sciences was formed and stock price doubled on the promise of a drug sold to the new company by GlaxoSmithKline. People became suspicious about the valuation for an unproven drug in a 10 person company with relatives, and the stock price tanked.
April 10, 2018 Biotech vet David Hung wipes Axovant from his work history By Damian Garde
Axovant failed the key phase 3 MINDSET trial for its lead drug intepirdine in treating Alzheimer’s disease. Following this, a second trial failure for nelotanserin in treating dementia due to Lewy Body Disease resulted in the stock falling to below $1 and the CEO Hung (former CEO of Medivation) quitting.
2019 Axovant: Axovant Gene Therapies (AXGT) is the new name for former Axovant Sciences An Interesting Turnaround Story With A Promising Pipeline Feb. 21, 2019. This company was rebranded a year later...
Nov 10, 2020 ‘We’re not a vant’: Axovant seeks to forget the past as the company rebrands to Sio Gene Therapies Max
In April 2023 the shareholders of Sio Gene Therapies voted to liquidate and dissolve the company.
Someone just went to prison for all that, no?
The rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes, the former Theranos CEO whose prison term has been shortened by 2 years
Interesting.
Thanks for posting all this.... I like what Vivek has to say. But by what you have posted... seems like he does start ups with /s “great” intention... and then milks them for big time investor funding, running them for a couple years, collecting small investors like myself... then runs them into the dirt. Sounds like a classic “PUMP and DUMP”. Probably while collecting a huge pay check to “run” them as CEO or something.. I wouldn’t doubt it if those kinds had shorted it back to the ground.. I have been duped by those types before. I always hung on with hope. Then lost it all.
I hope your post gets a lot of attention here.
I gotta go back and reread that stuff... and do some real DD Due Diligence.
What do you think, JayGalt, in simple words?
Side note... “Who is John Galt?” I read that book. Nice name.
Roughly tied with DeSantis in some polls.
I agree with your summation.
Vivek was the leader and creator of many biotech companies where investors were gored and those in the know made millions via pump & dump actions. He demonstrated his ability to use charisma to argue for a noble sounding business goal when the reality was that the only success would be fleecing investors.
After billions of $ invested and Vivek’s net worth had multiplied to > $500 million there are many successor companies with no viable drugs 9 years out and two approved drugs which have a slightly improved effect over existing drugs.
Now Vivek has a new schtick where he has created the meme that Black Rock, Vanguard, Exon & others are wasting money that should have gone to stockholders by investing in woke ventures. Vitek has created a company that would act as a middleman and vet investments for these companies to “protect” pension yields by eliminating woke investments which are less profitable. Vivek has written a book & taken lecture tours to promote this meme.
However as the Forbes article spells out the companies Vivek is targeting stand firm against woke investments and have fended off stockholders proposals for that kind of investment. The companies are performing their fiduciary duties to get the best yield for their investors. The only effect of Vivek’s company’s involvement would be the transfer of a 1.5% fee from the investment yield to Vivek and a layer of incompetency.
The biotech sector is rife with rapacious individuals who use charisma and a glib tongue to attract backers & investors. Investor losses are high and approved drugs infrequent. Individuals use the sector for their own purposes and the effect of their use is the creation of personal wealth, backer & investor losses, the promoting of expensive drugs with low efficacy and safety issues like remdesivir and industry-wide sky high pricing to recover the costs of this inefficient process. Wildly expensive, ineffective drugs with side effects are often promoted by people with monetary interests. The costs are covered by third party payers including Medicare but in the final analysis they are borne by the American people. Thus the Nation is fleeced for the profit of the unprincipled.
This is Vivek’s theatre of operations, his business history. Is it any surprise he can spin a platform to target conservatives? The surprise would be if someone with his history and ties to biotech companies and major pharmaceutical firms would realign against his own monetary interests rather than act to divert additional revenue streams from America & Americans to his companies & the pharmaceutical industry. Even now he is working against American’s pensions in his newest get richer scheme.
I hold out scant hope of formative change and have no expectations.
We have fallen victim to preservation of life no matter the cost and medicine is bleeding us dry to that end. I would not play god but let nature take its course in favor of quality of life in lieu of suffering for all. A person who has lost the ability to function with no hope of recovery needs to die with some dignity instead of on a machine being force fed with a gastric tube.
None of us honestly knows how brave we will be when faced with the end. Fight or resignation to our fate. I have not seen two exactly the same. I will not hazard to guess even my own thoughts on this about me let alone anyone else.
Very tough issue and I have no answer I am willing to commit to but we do the right thing for suffering animals.
I have to agree. Some decisions are very difficult but not making them is a decision as well even if it is a decision to trust God.
orphan drugs are failed drugs, just abandoned by the drug companies as unprofitable.
The self serving, foreign born Ramaswamy has a hidden agenda.
Where do you *think* he was born?
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