CantillonThe sale of Irish pharma Amryt this week certainly delivered a windfall for the company’s founders and those of its staff who had shares in the business for which Italian group Ciesi Farmaceutica paid more than double its stock market value. But they weren’t the only winners. They weren’t even the biggest winners, not by a long way.
Company co-founder and chief executive Joe Wiley was by far the biggest of the inside investors, holding a 2.33 per cent stakebut a quartet of investment funds hold a combined share of close to 49 per cent of the rare disease specialist. The smallest of these – in terms of their investment in Amryt – owns more of the company than all the staff and directors combined at 5.7 per cent. A hedge fund called Rubric Capital Management that has a recent history of activist engagement with companies in which it is invested, only got involved in Amryt in the third quarter of 2021 but will get $67.3 million from the initial deal, giving it a profit of $11.
The biggest institutional holder, another US fund called Athyrium Capital Management, holds just over 14 per cent of the Irish business. That will deliver an initial payout of $165.3 million, for a profit of $23 million with the prospect of a further $22 million depending on the earn-out.