SFBR shorts: Changing of the guard at nCipher; Meldex buys antibiotics products for E14.5m
nCipher plc, a global leader in protecting critical enterprise data, said Nicko van Someren (pictured) stood down from the Board at the end of the year.
As co-founder of nCipher, Dr van Someren held the position of Chief Technology Officer for more than 11 years, but had already reduced his working commitments earlier in the year. He has agreed to provide advice and support to the company for the first six months of 2008.
The Company expects to announce new executive appointments soon.
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Sagentia Group AG, an integrated technology consulting and venturing firm, said that TurfTrax plc, in which Sagentia owns an 8.8% stake, is seeking admission to the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange.
TurfTrax has appointed Newland Stockbrokers Ltd and City Financial Associates Limited as broker and Nominated Advisor to the Company respectively.
In conjunction with its admission to AIM, TurfTrax is seeking to raise approximately £3m by way of a placing of new ordinary shares to provide it with sufficient funds for the expansion of its international commercial interests, increased capital expenditure and further working capital. Following admission, Sagentia will own approximately 7.3% of the enlarged share capital.
TurfTrax plans to expand its commercial activities within the international betting market to which it supplies data and data products related to the real-time, 'in-race' speed and position tracking of race horses. By exploiting its tracking data, the Company has developed a betting product that - for the first time - enables the provision of fixed odds 'in-running' betting with dynamically changing prices.
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Acambis plc, a leading vaccine development company, said that subsequent to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) order of September 2007, it completed delivery of the entire 2.7 million doses of its ACAM2000(TM) smallpox vaccine to the CDC on 28 December 2007. This was ahead of the scheduled delivery in the first quarter of 2008.
As a result, Acambis now expects to record total revenues of around £9.5m in 2007.
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Meldex International plc said it has acquired Alfatil, Alphexine and Cephaclor Tonipharm antibiotic products for up to Euro14.5m in cash and shares.
The pharmaceutical company said it has paid Euro5.25m through the issue of about 4.25m shares to Laboratoires Tonipharm, the vendors of the products. A further Euro5.25m will be paid on Feb 7, via cash or the issue of shares.
Meldex said the Euro4m final amount is an earnout based on the gross margin achieved from the sale of the products for the year ending December 2008 and will be payable in two instalments.
Trading in the second half is strong and these products will bring additional revenues to the group, the company said.
6th January 2008
