Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Renovacare Inc., has come to terms over allegations that the company engaged in what the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said was a pump-and-dump scheme designed to defraud the company’s investors. The initial SEC complaint dated May 28, 2021, alleges that Renovacare and company executives began making misleading statements to investors as far back as July 2017, making this yet another cautionary tale of duplicitousness in life science startups.
“The market stinks,” Brian Johnson, a partner and vice chair of Wilmerhale’s corporate practice group, told a U.S. SEC advisory committee Feb. 27, as he painted a gloomy picture of last year’s IPO landscape in the U.S. While the scene was a little brighter than in 2022, a few key indicators could be worrisome, especially the median offering size, which is predictive of the strength of the IPO market, Johnson said
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Feb. 14 that it may elevate the threshold for registration of venture capital (VC) funds from $10 million to $12 million, a move that would exempt at least a few med-tech VC funds from registration requirements.
The U.S. SEC denied a petition asking it to amend its 50-year-old no-admit/no-deny settlement policy that slaps a perpetual gag on parties that opt to resolve SEC allegations through settlements rather than in court.
Final rules the U.S. SEC adopted Jan. 24 to beef up disclosure requirements and investor protection in initial public offerings by special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) and de-SPAC transactions could be the death knell for the SPAC market. They also could open the door for the SEC to regulate companies like biopharma and med-tech startups as investment companies.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Laura Tyler Perryman, the former CEO and co-founder of Stimwave Technologies Inc., with defrauding investors out of approximately $41 million by making false and misleading statements about one of the company’s products. According to the SEC’s complaint, the Stimwave device comprised several components, one of which was a fake, non-functional component that was implanted into patients’ bodies.
To resolve a U.S. SEC insider trading charge related to Pfizer Inc.’s $11.4 billion acquisition of Array Biopharma Inc. in 2019, Brian Rubin consented Oct. 17 to a judgment ordering him to disgorge $90,458, plus prejudgment interest of $16,914, and to pay a civil penalty to be determined by the court.
Neve Ilan, Israel-based Nano-X Imaging Ltd., had rocked the world of medical imaging with promises of X-ray imaging systems that provide low-cost tomosynthesis, but the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission says the company overpromised on the low-cost claim. The SEC said the actual production cost of the Nano-X ARC systems is at least double the $12,000 per-unit figure routinely touted by the company’s former CEO, Ran Poliakine, a factual misrepresentation that helped the company raise $165 million in an initial public offering.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued the final order concluding an action against Baxter International Inc. over the company’s use of accounting mechanisms to produce gains by manipulating foreign exchange transactions. While these activities are said to have been undertaken entirely at the behest of only two employees, the agreement will cost Baxter $18 million and serves as a cautionary tale about a lack of supervision of employees charged with managing company funds.
The U.S. Security and Exchange Commission’s final rule for disclosure of cybersecurity incidents would seem to weigh more heavily on device makers and their client hospitals than on other industries, particularly given that the draft rule required a four-day notification of any such events. The final rule retains that requirement to notify investors of any such breach within four days, although the SEC relented on the content of such disclosures to ease concerns about the potential for disclosures to amplify the cybersecurity threat.
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