Roivant Sciences enters into $7.3bn merger with Montes Archimedes Acquisition

Roivant Sciences has agreed to merge with Montes Archimedes Acquisition (MAAC), a Nasdaq-listed special purpose acquisition company, in a deal that values the Swiss biopharma company at $7.3 billion.

Montes Archimedes Acquisition is sponsored by health care investment firm Patient Square Capital.

The deal is expected to enable Roivant Sciences to get a listing on Nasdaq under the ROIV ticker symbol.

Established in 2014, the Swiss biopharma company has developed more than 40 drugs across a range of disease areas. Firms built by Roivant Sciences have carried out eight consecutive positive phase 3 studies and so far, have two FDA approvals.

The Swiss pharma company is also engaged in computational drug discovery by combining computational physics and platforms based on machine learning for the in silico design of small molecules.

Roivant Sciences will continue to be led by its existing management team headed by CEO Matthew Gline, while the company’s founder Vivek Ramaswamy will continue as its executive chairman.

Matthew Gline said: “I look forward to the next chapter of Roivant’s growth by beginning our life as a public company with an exceptionally strong and diverse base of long-term investors.

“We look forward to continuing to deliver important medicines to patients through our development engine and our rapidly growing drug discovery capabilities spanning multiple therapeutic areas and modalities.”

Roivant Sciences inks $7.3bn merger deal with Montes Archimedes Acquisition. Photo courtesy of Capri23auto from Pixabay.

The deal is expected to provide up to $611 million for the Swiss biopharma company for financing its discovery and development programs. Included in this is a maximum of $411 million held currently in the trust account of Montes Archimedes Acquisition, and a $200 million private investment in public equity (PIPE), priced at $10 per share.

The PIPE investors include Fidelity Management & Research, Suvretta Capital, Palantir Technologies, Eventide Asset Management, Viking Global Investors, RTW Investments, Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma, and SoftBank Group’s SB Management.

Jim Momtazee – Managing Partner of Patient Square Capital said: “Roivant is at the cutting edge of using technology to discover and develop transformative medicines for a wide range of serious diseases, and in a very short time they have established a remarkable track record of building subsidiaries that have run successful registrational clinical trials for approved medicines.

“I first met the company in 2015 and have watched its growth over the last 6 years with admiration. Based on our extensive due diligence spanning the last 5 months, I look forward to a long-lasting partnership with one of the most exciting and innovative companies in the life sciences industry.”

The deal, which is subject to the SPAC’s shareholders approval and other customary closing conditions, is likely to close in Q3 2021.

Earlier this year, Roivant Sciences signed an all-stock deal worth $450 million to acquire Silicon Therapeutics, a Boston-based drug design, research, and development company.