Supporting a pioneer in the treatment of allergies grow its business

ASIT Biotech is a Belgian company founded in 1997 at the Université Libre de Bruxelles specialised in the development and future commercialisation of a range of breakthrough immunotherapy products for the treatment of allergies.

By providing short-course immunotherapy treatment, the company aims at tapping the growing market for allergies healing, today dominated by symptomatic drugs that require daily intake or long-term immunotherapy treatments that have low patient acceptance and limited real life effectiveness. Its innovative technology is based on highly purified natural allergen fragments in an optimal size selection.

In order to take the development of its products to the next phase, ASIT Biotech decided to secure the necessary funding by going public and conduct an IPO on Euronext Brussels and Euronext Paris.

With recognised expertise in the biotech and medical technology sectors, Societe Generale was selected to participate as joint global coordinator and joint bookrunner in the IPO.

The transaction was a success and raised EUR 23.5M with keen interest from institutional as well as Belgian and French retail investors.

Hugues de Lavarène, ECM Director within SG CIB commented:

“This biotech has a unique scientific approach to the treatment of respiratory allergies. As a pioneer in the biotech/medtech sectors, it was natural for Societe Generale to commit to the project. The money raised with the IPO will allow ASIT Biotech to grow its business and complete the development phases of its products against grass pollen rhinitis (phase III) and house dust mite rhinitis (phase I).”

Among over 60 IPOs carried out by the industry in France in recent years, one in every two transactions has been completed with the support of Societe Generale’s teams. Other successful biotech and healthcare IPOs recently conducted by Societe Generale include Geneuro, DBV Technologies, CellNovo, Poxel, Pixium Vision, Genomic Vision, Supersonic Imagine, Txcell and Mainstay Medical.

This achievement is further testimony to the bank’s robust expertise in serving clients in Equity Capital Markets in France, where the bank ranks #1 since 2010 (and in particular the IPO market, SG was global coordinator or Joint Bookrunner on the last 9 significant IPOs on the French market).