Fenwick's Amanda Rose and Ryan Mitteness Break Down the Biotech Reverse Merger Boom with Law360

Biotechs are increasingly looking to reverse mergers to hedge against an uncertain IPO market, corporate partners Amanda Rose and Ryan Mitteness recently told Law360 in an analysis of the trend. 

The popularity of reverse mergers is growing, in part, because companies can lock in valuations early, rather than setting their valuation and allocating their IPO at the end of the IPO process. 

"You're aligning on valuation and committing your investors to this transaction at the front end," said Rose, who co-leads Fenwick's capital markets and public companies groups. "It takes some of the market risk off the table. That's the key." 

In this environment, many companies are keeping both options open. 

"Companies want to go public, and then they're literally just evaluating both of these," Mitteness told Law360. "And a lot of the work is similar so they can do some prep work and make a decision later." 

The article noted that Fenwick handled several recent reverse mergers in this space, including Caldera Therapeutics in its merger with Synlogic, Treeline Bioscience in its merger with Standard BioTools, and Passage Bio in its merger with Remix Therapeutics. 

Read the full article at Law360.