The transaction will enable Roivant Sciences to become a public entity and is expected to be listed on Nasdaq under the new ticker symbol ‘ROIV’

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Roivant has developed over 40 medicines across a wide range of disease areas. (Credit: fernando zhiminaicela from Pixabay)

Roivant Sciences, a Swiss healthcare tech firm, has agreed to merge with Montes Archimedes Acquisition Corporation (MAAC) in a deal that values the Swiss company at $7.3bn.

The deal with MAAC, a special purpose acquisition company sponsored by Patient Square Capital, will enable Roivant Sciences to become a public entity and is expected to be listed on Nasdaq under the new ticker symbol ‘ROIV’.

Established in 2014, Roivant has developed more than 40 medicines across a wide range of disease areas.

The company is engaged in computational drug discovery through the combination of computational physics and machine learning-based platforms for the in silico design of small molecules.

The merger transaction is expected to deliver gross proceeds of up to $611m to finance discovery and development programs.

It includes up to $411m currently held in MAAC’s trust account and a concurrent $200m common stock private investment in public equity (PIPE) financing from healthcare investors.

The investors include Fidelity Management & Research Company, Suvretta Capital, Eventide Asset Management, RTW Investments, Viking Global Investors and SB Management, a subsidiary of SoftBank Group, as well as strategic investors, including Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma and Palantir Technologies.

The transaction is expected to be closed in the third quarter of 2021, subject to the approval of MAAC’s shareholders and other customary closing conditions.

Upon closing of the transaction, the Swiss firm will continue to operate under its current management team led by CEO Matthew Gline while Roivant Sciences founder Vivek Ramaswamy will continue to serve as executive chairman.

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.”

Patient Square Capital managing partner Jim Momtazee will join Roivant’s board of directors.

Before establishing Patient Square Capital, Momtazee worked at KKR for more than two decades.

Momtazee 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.”