While Forma Therapeutics
Holdings LLC has announced two discovery-stage cancer deals with big
pharmas this year, the biotech has been quietly pursuing an alternative
approach to extracting value from its engine: reorganizing into an LLC and
packaging assets into newco corporations. The most recent example came in
December, when Forma took its epigenetics research and put it into a newco.
The LLC structure "allows
you to tie investments into discrete legal entities," founder, President
and CEO Steven Tregay told Ebb & Flow. "We have the ability if we
choose to sell the companies. LLCs are pass-through tax entities that don't
have a corporate level tax. If we sell the stock of a product subsidiary, the
proceeds of that flow through to investors and there's no tax for