Lawsuit Against Omeros Drags On
Seattle-based biotech company Omeros went public in October, after raising nearly $110 million in venture capital and delaying its IPO for nearly two years. Since then, it's watched the price of its shares tank. Today they're trading at around $6.44, down over 35% from the IPO price of $10, making Omeros one of the worst performing IPOs of 2009, according to Renaissance Capital. David Weild, the former vice chairman of NASDAQ who co-authored Grant Thornton's reports proclaiming an IPO crisis, told peHUB that Omeros' performance shows how structural flaws in the stock market can undermine the performance of small-cap companies, since Omeros -- whose product speeds recovery from surgery -- is trading "at a discount to total money invested plus new money raised. There's nothing in this business to represent the years of work and human equity that's gone into it." But Omeros has other problems too. Less than a month before its IPO, the company and its directors were sued by its former Chief Financial Officer, Richard Klein, who claims, among other things, defamation and wrongful termination. Klein was fired in January after he acted as a whistleblower and reported that Omeros had falsified claims to the National Institutes of Health on work done for its NIH grant.
