When is a deal not really a deal?

What the sale of LCC Therapeutics tells us about the risks of biotech investment

Hello Rainmakers,

We ran a deal story in June that was initially presented as one of the great shiny examples of inward investment and the advancement of science.

The trouble is, it was anything but, and to the embarrassment of everyone involved we told as much of the true story about what had happened as it was possible to do.

The regulatory release about the deal for a Liverpool-founded biotech firm, LCC Therapeutics by the acquiring business XtalPi Holdings, a publicly listed Chinese biotechnology company, was released to the Hong Kong stock exchange and from the US headquarters in Massachusetts.

Unlike regulatory market announcements in the UK, they can leave a great deal out of the public domain.

Notably, the status of the venture investors who had backed the business this far and how much the business was acquired for.

We spotted through legal filings that the business had in fact been bought out of administration, saving 15 jobs at the firm’s Runcorn headquarters, which is good news for them.

What hadn’t been reported in the notice was that Andrew Poxon and Hilary Pascoe of Leonard Curtis had been appointed Joint Administrators of LCC Therapeutics on June 10, 2025 and following the extensive marketing of the company for sale, had conducted a “going concern sale” of the business and assets of the company completed to a company called LCC Technologies, “shortly following” their appointment.