BioCentury
ARTICLE | Finance

The venture PIPEs

August 19, 2002 7:00 AM UTC

When the public market shuts off, it's common to see the PIPE market heat up. One sign of the depth of this bear market is that it's inducing some VCs to play in the public space. The venture crowd is flush with money, and public valuations are often below similar stage private deals. Thus, there's a chance that we'll see more deals like the $45 million PIPE done by Corixa Corp., which was taken up entirely by a group of VCs.

"The venture side is saying we have a lot of companies on our books for which a step-up means we'd be buying stock at the $6-$8 range," said CRXA Chairman and CEO Steven Gillis. "A lot of them are asking themselves 'why buy $6-$8 illiquid stock when you can buy stock of the same value in a public company that's a lot further along?'"...