Akin Gump Advises Royalty Pharma in $2.5 Billion Nasdaq IPO

(New York and London) –Akin Gump has advised Royalty Pharma plc on its $2.5 billion initial public offering and listing on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. This is the largest offering on a U.S. exchange so far this year.

Royalty Pharma priced 77,681,670 Class A ordinary shares on 15 June at $28.00 per share, the top of the pricing range. The IPO was upsized due to strong investor demand and further upsized when the underwriters exercised their greenshoe option to purchase up to an additional 11,652,250 Class A ordinary shares from the company, raising a further $325 million. The shares finished the first day at $44.50, lifting the company’s market valuation from $16.7 billion to $26.5 billion.

Established in 1996, Royalty Pharma is the largest buyer of biopharma royalties and a leading funder of innovation across the biopharmaceutical industry, collaborating with innovators from academic institutions, research hospitals and nonprofits through small and mid-cap biotechnology companies to leading global pharmaceutical companies.

Akin Gump advised Royalty Pharma on the UK and US corporate and tax structuring of the transaction which is the first “UP-C” listing of an English company. Up-C structures, which are used in the US market, allow a group to become publicly listed while enabling certain investors to remain invested in a lower-tier group entity.

The Akin Gump team was led by partners Stuart Leblang for U.S. and international tax matters, David Antheil and Jonathan Pavlich for U.S. corporate matters and Harry Keegan for UK corporate matters. They were assisted by an extensive team from across the firm’s U.S. and London offices, including partners David Snyder, Jason Daniel, Ezra Zahabi, Tim Pearce, Stuart Sinclair and Vance Chapman; senior counsel Caryn Greenspan, Kevin Rowe, Dan Zimmerman, Tony Barnes, Michael Kliegman and Howard Leventhal; counsel Eric Wexler and Serena Lee; and associates Ekaterina Lyashenko, Eric Johnson and Christopher Beardmore.

In 2017, Akin Gump, led by Messrs. Leblang and Antheil, also advised Royalty Pharma and its Pharmakon affiliate in relation to the successful $762 million IPO of BioPharma Credit PLC and its listing on the Specialist Fund Segment of the London Stock Exchange. (Click here to learn more.)

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP is a leading international law firm with more than 1,000 lawyers and advisors in offices throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Founded in 1945, the firm is proudly celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2020. #AkinGump75

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