Forma-tive thinking

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 Forma, only for investors."...