Research collaboration and funding round
The leading light of Europe’s agricultural biotechnology sector, Devgen NV completed a private placing of 1,505,829 new shares at €20.75 per share, raising €31 million, a week after announcing a major five year R&D agreement with the US agribiotech giant, Monsanto Company.
At the same time existing shareholders sold 2.3 million shares to institutional investors at the same price.
Demand for the combined offering of shares was more than three times oversubscribed with interest coming from Belgian and international institutional investors.
The impetus for the placing came from the announcement of a five-year R&D and technology exchange agreement with Monsanto.
The two companies have worked together under an earlier R&D collaboration signed in 2004. The new R&D agreement commits additional funding from Monsanto for Devgen’s research, and is coupled with an agreement which will broaden the relationship so that both companies can explore the use of each other’s technology in the particular crops they are interested in.
Devgen will have access to Monsanto’s work in rice and small cereal grains, especially in Asia, while Monsanto intends to initially leverage Devgen’s gene regulation technologies in corn, cotton and soybeans.
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