Dublin-based Venn Life Sciences wins dual-listing approval

Dublin-headquartered clinical trial management group Venn Life Sciences has won approval to start trading its shares on the Irish Stock Exchange's Enterprise Securities Market (ESM), alongside its existing AIM listing in London.

Davy has been appointed as adviser and joint broker to Venn to coincide with the ESM listing. Companies seeking admission to the ESM need to have a minimum market capitalisation of €5 million. The admission of Venn brings the number of companies quoted on the market to 28.

The ESM is designed for emerging or smaller companies to which a higher investment risk tends to be attached. Unlike the Main Securities Market (MSM), a three-year trading record is not required for admission and no minimum level of shares need be made available to the public.

Venn, a provider of clinical trial management services to pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device companies, said last week it had signed new contracts worth over €3.4 million with a leading unnamed US-based biotechnology client.

Chief executive Tony Richardson said admission to the ESM would help Venn appeal to euro zone investors.

“Joining the Enterprise Securities Market was an easy decision for us. Given our existing listing on AIM, the process to add an ESM quotation was very straightforward. Having a euro quotation through the ISE will enable us to expand our investor base by accessing both euro and sterling pools of capital and facilitate future growth,” he said.

Venn, which acquired Netherlands-based Kinesis Pharma for a total consideration of up to €6.5 million last September, reported revenue of €4.9 million for 2014, up 140 per cent on the €2.04 million announced a year earlier.