One of Arix Bioscience’s joint-brokers quit on the morning it announced a contentious takeover deal in protest at its inequitable treatment of shareholders.
Peel Hunt demanded that its name and that of its two healthcare bankers be taken off the release for the sale of the company’s assets to the rival life sciences investment company RTW Biotech.
It resigned with immediate effect hours later.
The investment bank, which had been brought into the deal late in the process, is understood to have told Arix that it could not sanction a deal that discriminated against three quarters of its shareholders to provide a cash exit on better terms to its 25.5 per cent activist investor Acacia Research.
Under the deal, unveiled at the start of this
