Redx boss scooped up shares after revealing London Stock Exchange exit

The boss of pharma firm Redx has scooped up hundreds of thousands of shares in the company after its share price collapsed on news it would ditch its listing on the London Stock Exchange.

According to filings on the London Stock Exchange, Lisa Anson, chief executive of Redx, has bought some 589,000 shares in the firm over the past two weeks, worth around £38,875.

She now holds a stake of around 0.2 per cent in the firm, which has a market capitalisation of about £45m.

Shares in Redx plunged 70 per cent at the start of April after the company revealed it would ditch its listing on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM market to go private.

In an announcement of the move, Redx said it had been hamstrung by a lack of liquidity and could no longer raise the cash needed to fund its drug investment plans.

“Despite completing some of the largest AIM capital raises for biotech companies in recent years, Redx is still liquidity constrained on AIM,” said Dr Jane Griffiths, Redx chair at the time.

“As a result, we believe our current market valuation is not reflective of our track record or future potential and is not conducive to raising the level of capital required for our growing clinical portfolio.” 

Bosses said they believe the firm “can access a broader universe of specialty investors” and, “a larger quantum of future funding” on the private markets.

At a general meeting on Friday, shareholders in the drugmaker voted in favour of scrapping the listing to go private.

Shares in Redx have cratered around 86 per cent since it floated in 2015. The firm’s plans to delist have come amid a flurry of exits from the London stock Exchange’s AIM market and fears over its role in the City.

Earlier this week, Scirocco Energy, an AIM-listed investing company said it would cancel its listing in favour of the “flexibility” of private ownership.

The number of firms listed on AIM has cratered 30 per cent from 1,104 to just 742 since Redx listed  in 2015. Last year alone, AIM suffered 78 cancellations and a further 15 in the opening two months of this year.

Redx declined to comment.