Jazz slashes expected IPO price, follows "date rape" controversy

May 31, 2007 | Matt Marshall

Jazz Pharmaceuticals, the generally unexciting specialty-pharmaceutical maker that hoped to raise $179.4 million in an IPO, has collided with reality.

The Palo Alto, Calif. company today slashed its expected IPO price by a fifth.

We’ve written before about Jazz and its wildly overrated strategy of salvaging poorly performing or cast-off drugs from other companies. David Hamilton, of VentureBeat LifeSciences, is on the trail, noting other worrying signs, such as the fact that the active ingredient in Jazz’s lead drug, a narcolepsy treatment called Xyrem, is derived from gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB), a “club drug” linked to overdose deaths and use in date rape.

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Tags: date rape, narcolepsy, Xyrem

About the Author, Matt Marshall

Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.