Acquisitions usually depress the stock price of the buyer to reflect the dilution and propel the shares of the acquired to reflect the premium. But not always.

Good news in the biopharma industry and the US economy gave public drug developers the boost they needed to raise cash, including Karuna’s $750m offering. Private company financings slowed during the second week of August, but Prellis and Vector BioPharma raised venture capital.

ARCH closed a $3bn VC fund to end the month of June while in the same week six public biopharma firms said they are cutting jobs. Even so, some publicly traded companies have been able to launch sizeable offerings, including a $450m note sale by Cytokinetics and Xenon’s $250m follow-on. 

Axsome’s CRL was not the first from the US FDA for the nearly insoluble NSAID as sponsors try different technologies for delivering its pain relief quickly.