Storm of activity at Summit as fund raising announced

It's all go at Oxford based drug developer Summit Corporation as the firm announces a five million pound share placing, appoints a new Chief Executive and reveals encouraging results for an anti-superbug drug.

The company says it will issue 166,666,670 new shares at 3p per share to "certain institutional investors and directors". The news saw the stock drop 46% to 3.25p as the market reflected the placing price.

The money will be used to fund the firm's ongoing investment in research, which it claims is going well. Summit says is has successfully completed preclinical studies on its drug candidate, SMT 19969, which it's hoped will become a new antibiotic treatment for infections of the hospital 'superbug', Clostridium difficile or C.Diff. The drug is now being put forward for regulatory approval.

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Coordinating all this activity will be new Chief Executive, Glyn Edwards. Dr Barry Price, acting Executive Chairman, will lose his executive brief to make way for Edwards.

The Chief Executive inherits a company which made a net loss of £2.7m in the 12 months to the end of January, lower than the £4.7m in the prior year.

Pharmaceutical firms often make a loss as they fund research through to clinical trial stage, before cashing in on licensing deals if the drug is successful.

BS