Imperial Innovations has announced the placing of 40,064,650 ordinary shares. At £4 ($6.79) per share, the technology transfer company raises £150m ($255m) by issuing 37,500,000 new ordinary shares and a further £10.25m ($17.4m) by selling 2,564,650 existing ordinary shares. JP Morgan Securities – under its UK investment bank name of JP Morgan Cazenove – and Cenkos Securities are acting as joint bookrunners.
Invesco Asset Management, Lansdowne Developed Markets Master Fund and Woodford Investment Management – the initial places – had 32,564,650 shares in aggregate placed firm with them.
Invesco, Lansdowne and Woodford will acquire 15 million, 5,137,500 and 15,477,535 shares, respectively. On completion of the placing, they are expected to hold 42%, 13.7% and 13.4%, respectively, of the enlarged share capital of Imperial Innovations. Imperial College London will hold 20%.
Woodford had initally agreed to acquire 7.5 million further placing shares, subject to clawback. That number was reduced by 59% pursuant to the clawback clause to satisfy orders from placees participating in the accelerated book build. Accordingly, a total of 4,449,615 shares have been placed with new institutional investors and with existing shareholders other than the initial placees.
Application has been made to the London Stock Exchange for the new shares to be admitted to trading on Aim. It is expected that the admission will become effective and that dealings will commence in the new shares at 8am BST on 26 June 2014 (or no later than 30 June 2014, subject to agreement by the joint bookrunners). The new shares will, when issued, be credited as fully paid and will rank pari passu in all respects with the existing ordinary shares.