Neovasc Inc. (NASDAQ: NVCN) (TSX: NVCN) ("Neovasc" or the "Company"), a leader in the development of minimally invasive devices for the treatment of refractory angina, announced today that the Company has entered into a binding agreement (the "Arrangement Agreement") with Shockwave Medical, Inc. ("Shockwave"), whereby Shockwave has agreed to acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares (the "Common Shares") of the Company (the "Transaction").
Under the terms of the Arrangement Agreement, Neovasc shareholders will receive US$27.25 per Common Share in cash upfront on completion of the Transaction, corresponding to an enterprise value of approximately US$100 million, plus deferred payments of up to approximately US$47 million on the achievement of future regulatory milestones in the form of a contingent value right ("CVR") per Common Share to receive payment upon final FDA premarket approval to market the Neovasc Reducer™ (the "Reducer") in the United States for treatment of angina (the "Milestone"). Each CVR will pay: (i) US$12.00 if the Milestone is achieved on or prior to June 30, 2026, (ii) US$8.00 if the Milestone is achieved during the period beginning on July 1, 2026 and ending on December 31, 2026 or (iii) US$4.00 if the Milestone is achieved during the period beginning on January 1, 2027 and ending on December 31, 2027. The upfront cash consideration represents a premium of 27% and 68% to the closing price and 30-day volume-weighted average price ("VWAP"), respectively, of the Common Shares on the Nasdaq Capital Market on January 13, 2023.
Merger to result in Nasdaq-listed company focused on developing immunotherapies based on Elicio’s proprietary lymph node-targeting Amphiphile (AMP) technology
Lead program of the combined company will be ELI-002, a therapeutic cancer vaccine targeting mKRAS-driven tumors, currently enrolling a Phase 1 trial for patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and colorectal cancer
Conference call to be held 8:00 am Eastern Time on Wednesday, January 18
The Elicio and Angion management teams will host a conference call on Wednesday, January 18, 2023, at 8:00 am Eastern Time to discuss the merger. A live webcast of the conference call can be accessed at the “Events & Presentations” page on the Angion website at https://ir.angion.com/events-presentations. A replay will be available on the Angion website at the same link shortly after conclusion of the event.
During a busy shift at the height of Beijing's COVID wave, a physician at a private hospital saw a printed notice in the emergency department: doctors should “try not to” write COVID-induced respiratory failure on death certificates.
Instead, if the deceased had an underlying disease, that should be named as the main cause of death, according to the notice, a copy of which was seen by Reuters.
If doctors believe that the death was caused solely by COVID-19 pneumonia, they must report to their superiors, who will arrange for two levels of "expert consultations" before a COVID death is confirmed, it said.
Six doctors at public hospitals across China told Reuters they had either received similar oral instructions discouraging them from attributing deaths to COVID or were aware that their hospitals had such policies.
Some relatives of people who have died with COVID say the disease did not appear on their death certificates, and some patients have reported not being tested for coronavirus despite arriving with respiratory symptoms.
"We have stopped classifying COVID deaths since the reopening in December," said a doctor at a large public hospital in Shanghai. "It is pointless to do that because almost everyone is positive."
Such directives have led to criticism by global health experts and the World Health Organization that China has drastically underreported COVID deaths as the coronavirus runs rampant in the country, which abandoned its strict "zero-COVID" regime in December.
On Saturday, officials said 60,000 people with COVID-19 had died in hospitals since China's policy U-turn, a roughly ten-fold increase from previously reported figures, but still short of expectations of international experts, who have said China could see more than a million COVID-related deaths this year.
China's Center for Disease Control (CDC) and National Health Commission (NHC) did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment.
Microsoft Corp on Monday said it is widening access to hugely popular software from OpenAI, a startup it is backing whose futuristic ChatGPT chatbot has captivated Silicon Valley.
Microsoft said the startup's tech, which it so far has previewed to its cloud-computing customers in a program it called the Azure OpenAI Service, was now generally available, a distinction that's expected to bring a flood of new usage.
The news comes as Microsoft has looked at adding to the $1 billion stake in OpenAI it announced in 2019, two people familiar with the matter previously told Reuters. The news site Semafor reported earlier this month that Microsoft might invest $10 billion; Microsoft declined to comment on any potential deal.
Public interest in OpenAI surged following its November release of ChatGPT, a text-based chatbot that can draft prose, poetry or even computer code on command. ChatGPT is powered by generative artificial intelligence, which conjures new content after training on vast amounts of data -- tech that Microsoft is letting more customers apply to use.
ChatGPT itself, not just its underlying tech, will soon be available via Microsoft's cloud, it said in a blog post.
Microsoft said it is vetting customers' applications to mitigate potential abuse of the software, and its filters can screen for harmful content users might input or the tech might produce.
The business potential of such software has garnered massive venture-capital investment in startups producing it, at a time funding has otherwise dried up. Already, some companies have used the tech to create marketing content or demonstrate how it could negotiate a cable bill.
Microsoft said CarMax, KPMG and others were using its Azure OpenAI service. Its press release quoted an Al Jazeera vice president as saying the service could help the news organization summarize and translate content.
It is not right for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to play such a big role in global health funding, but the group will not back away until others step up, its chief executive said.
The Gates Foundation has faced criticism that it has too much power and influence in the global health realm, including within the World Health Organization, without the requisite accountability.
In his annual letter released on Tuesday, chief executive Mark Suzman hit back at the criticism as he revealed that the foundation would spend $8.3 billion this year, its highest ever annual budget.
"It's not right for a private philanthropy to be one of the largest funders of multinational global health efforts," he said, adding that countries ought to be leading the charge.
"But make no mistake- where there's a solution that can improve livelihoods and save lives, we'll advocate persistently for it. We won't stop using our influence, along with our monetary commitments, to find solutions."
Suzman said the aim of the fund was not to set the agenda for the WHO or other global health groups, but to provide them with better options and data as they make key decisions.
Bill and Melinda Gates, the tech billionaires-turned-philanthropists who set up the foundation, have long defended their efforts amid questions over whether their vast payouts give them undue influence and impact in global development.
Alongside funding efforts to eradicate diseases like malaria and polio, the Gates Foundation is also the second biggest donor to the WHO, one of the issues that critics have regularly raised about its role, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I'd love it if many more governments would pass us on that list - because that would mean more lives saved," wrote Suzman.
Last year, the WHO agreed a deal that would see member states increase their guaranteed contributions, reducing the role of private donors and allowing the United Nations agency more flexibility on spending.
Thousands of folks in the south no longer have home insurance because companies are leaving the area after years of devastating storms.
The state of Louisiana is at the center of this insurance dilemma.
In the last two years, more than 20 companies have gone under or withdrawn from the state, forcing hundreds of thousands of families to pay higher premiums or go without coverage.
“We are certainly in a crisis,” said Louisiana’s Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon.
Donelon says the crisis started in 2020 when Hurricane Laura hit Lake Charles. Soon after, the state was hit by storms Delta and Zeta, and then another major hurricane, Ida, in 2021.
“800,000 claims were filed after Laura and Ida, resulting in insurers paying $23 billion for insured loses,” Donelon said.
But it’s not just severe weather in Louisiana jacking up prices. Donelon explains that record-breaking natural disasters across the globe are having an impact.
“Our regional industry is backed up by the international reinsurance market and that market has been impacted not just by our horrible hurricane seasons, but also hurricane Ian in south Florida this past year, record wildfires in California and Australia, and record flooding in Germany,” Donelon said. “All of those challenges are making insurance much more difficult to come by and more expensive for policyholders in the coastal parts of our state.”
The walls of a home were completely blown off after a tornado tore through Marrero, Louisiana. Fox News
Currently, the average premium for home insurance in Louisiana is over $2,000 a year. That’s 46% higher than the national average. With companies pulling out of the state or putting a hold on writing new business, people are forced to purchase policies through the state’s “insurer of last resort,” Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance. Citizens prices are going up this year with average premiums at about $5,000 in at least seven parishes. By law, Citizens sets it prices above market rates, so the state does not compete with the insurance companies.
“We don’t want to put the state in the insurance business,” Donelon said.
While Louisiana had a quiet hurricane season last year, some families are still recovering from deadly tornadoes.
Just days before Christmas, 21 tornadoes touched down across the state, many in rural communities.
Charlotte Lewis says her sister just repaired her home after Hurricane Ida.Fox News
Gail Bradley, of Killona, was one of the dozens injured during the storms. Her sister, Charlotte Lewis says she’s still recovering.
“She was pinned down by her entertainment center for about 30 minutes, screaming and petrified, trying to get someone to come and help her,” Lewis said.
Fortunately, help did arrive, but now Bradley is on her own to repair up to $60,000 worth of damage. Lewis says after Hurricane Ida, home insurance became too expensive for her sister.
“She’s a retired person on a fixed income,” Lewis said. “She can’t afford it to get the insurance and when she tried there was no one here to accept it, they all left.”
Now the family is trying to do everything they can to clean up Bradley’s property, so she can go home.
“I don’t want my sister to come home and see this mess,” Lewis said. “We want to just get the home knocked down because if she sees it like this, I know it will crush her.”
The state is working on several solutions to the insurance crisis. Donelon says one solution the state hopes for is more of an immediate fix: an insurance incentive program that would offer millions of dollars in grants to companies who commit to doing business in Louisiana.
“We did this after Hurricane Katrina, and it was very successful in attracting new companies to do business in our state,” Donelon said.
Long term, the state is also offering homeowners grants to fortify their home roofs, through the Louisiana Fortify Homes Program. The state of Alabama established a similar program in 2011 and has helped over 3,000 families better protect their home in the last decade.
GDP growth slowed to 3% in 2022, missing government’s target
Economists expect recovery this year after Covid wave passes
China’s economy grew at the second slowest pace since the 1970s last year as Covid restrictions hammered activity, though better-than-forecast fourth quarter and December data add to optimism it may be primed for a recovery.
Gross domestic product in the world’s second-largest economy grew 3% in 2022, the National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday, higher than the median estimate of 2.7% in a Bloomberg survey of economists. For the final quarter, the economy expanded 2.9%.
