(AOF) – The activist fund Akkadian Partners, opposed to the merger between Erytech and Pherecydes (which gave birth to Phaxiam Therapeutics), indicates that it has kept all the shares it has acquired in recent months and did not participate in the share sales that led to the fall of Phaxiam Therapeutics “biggest fall in the SRD market at the close of Monday July 3, 2023”. He announces several legal actions to try to obtain compensation. Today at 0.60 euro, the title has lost more than a quarter of its value since its first day of trading.
The fund attributes to the shareholders of Pherecydes, “not bound by any commitment to retain their shares, the responsibility for this fall, carrying out, in an emergency, the sale of the shares received under the merger. These sales would have enabled them to generate the substantial gains that the advantageous parity of this merger offered them on a silver platter, and this instead of supporting the stock market value of Erytech which has become Phaxiam Therapeutics”.
Akkadian Partners “hoped to convince Erytech’s management to avoid the fall in its resulting stock market value and its merger with Pherecydes and the choice of a disastrous merger parity for Erytech”, but recognizes that there “is no not reached”.
Consequently, Akkadian Partners announces that it has decided to turn to French justice to obtain compensation for the damage suffered by Erytech shareholders, and that it is studying with its American advisers the possibility of a “class action”. (“collective action”) to repair the consequent loss of value suffered.
Already at the origin of three legal actions in this case, Akkadian Partners intends to initiate two new proceedings in France.
The first is a summons against Erytech, before the commercial courts, to request the nullity of the vote of the merger and consequently of the merger itself on the grounds that “the counting of the quorum and the vote was done on bad bases calculation”, not taking into account in particular the fraud in the issue of shares carried out on May 15, 2023 sanctioned by the cancellation of the shares issued and the voting rights attached to these shares,
The second is a “direct summons”, in the long term, before the French correctional courts, against those, authors or accomplices, among the leaders of Erytech and Pherecydes, as among their advisers, who will have abused their powers. within the meaning of Article L. 242-6 4° of the Commercial Code.
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Loss of speed in European research
European research is losing ground to American and Chinese research. In twenty years, Europe’s share has fallen from 41% to 31% in global R&D. China’s share jumped from 1% to 8%. As for the United States, which supplanted Europe, in 2001 it devoted only 2 billion euros per year more than Europe to R&D, whereas now this gap has reached 25 billion! Some experts accuse the European authorities of not having deployed effective policies. The financing of pharmaceutical research should therefore have been better targeted via the “Horizon 2020” programme. France only comes in eighteenth position in European funding despite the quality of its research. Conversely, the United States concentrates funding on Boston and a few centers of excellence.