SPAC Ashington Innovation plans to acquire dormant biotech Celixir and lead heart failure program for $172M

Lon­don-based SPAC Ash­ing­ton In­no­va­tion is plan­ning to ac­quire dor­mant, UK-based biotech Celixir for $172 mil­lion (£135 mil­lion) in an all-share trans­ac­tion, tak­ing over its lead pro­gram for a heart fail­ure drug.

In or­der to pay for Celixir, Ash­ing­ton said it will place new or­di­nary shares to raise up to £3 mil­lion to fi­nance drug de­vel­op­ment and work­ing cap­i­tal.

Ja­son Smart, the founder of Ash­ing­ton In­no­va­tion, said in a state­ment that “the pro­posed ac­qui­si­tion meets our stat­ed ob­jec­tive of iden­ti­fy­ing a po­ten­tial­ly ex­treme­ly valu­able en­ti­ty ca­pa­ble of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and with sig­nif­i­cant tech­no­log­i­cal ad­van­tages.”

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