Cleary Gottlieb represented Goldman, Sachs & Co., BofA Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. and Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated as underwriters in Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated’s $500.5 million registered public offering of 13,000,000 shares of common stock, listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. The deal, which was upsized due to demand, priced on December 2 and closed (together with the exercise by the underwriters of their option to purchase an additional 1,500,000 shares) on December 8.
Vertex Pharmaceuticals is in the business of discovering, developing and commercializing small molecule drugs for the treatment of serious diseases. Its focus is on viral diseases, inflammation, autoimmune diseases, cancer, pain and cystic fibrosis. Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ lead drug candidate, telaprevir, is an oral hepatitis C protease inhibitor and one of the most advanced of a new class of antiviral treatments in clinical development that targets hepatitis C virus infection.