Early last month, three-year-old Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. shook the business world by raising $99 million--nearly double what the company had originally planned to raise--in its initial public stock offering. The deal was remarkable for two reasons. The amount of money raised in this IPO was second in the biotech community only to that of Cetus Corp., of Emeryville, Calif., which raised $115 million when it went public in biotech's glory days of 1981, when Wall Street first became enamored with the potential of the technology. Moreover, Tarrytown, N.Y.-based Regeneron is a real long shot for investors: With no potential products even slated for clinical trials, the company is a good 10 to 12 years from delivering a marketable product.
Regeneron's windfall of April 2 may have shocked a number of technology watchers and inspired dark predictions from others. But the fact remains that while Regeneron's wildly successful initial public offering ...
