GOING PUBLIC: Gajus Worthington, founder and CEO of Fluidigm, and the rest of the California-based biotech team in Times Square on February, 10, 2011, the day the company went public, raising $75 million. NASDAQ STOCK EXCHANGE
In 2000, Wall Street fell in love with biotechnology. Biotech stocks flew off the shelves as investors clamored to get cozy with companies working on tantalizing new concepts like “genomics” and “gene-based therapies.” In total that year, US biotechs completed 63 initial public offerings (IPOs), raising $5.4 billion in funding.
But that love affair has long since soured. Gajus Worthington remembers the falling-out vividly. “It was a nightmare,” recalls Worthington, CEO of Fluidigm, a California-based biotech tools company. Fluidigm had plans to “go public”—issue shares of stock in the open market for the first time—in late September 2008. But on Sunday, September 14, mega-investment banks Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers collapsed and the stock market tanked, taking Fluidigm’s plans with it. “Investors were depressed, catatonic, ...
