Ebb & Flow

Venture capitalists demonstrated their appetite for public biotech companies last week by dropping more than $160 million into three companies. Cadence (NASDAQ:CADX) scooped up $86.6 million in a placement of 12 million shares at $7.13, Affymax (NASDAQ:AFFY) raised $42 million in a placement of 2.8 million shares at $11.25 and 650,000 units at $15.33, while Norway's Algeta (OSE:Algeta) said that it was raising $35 million in a private placement at NOK11.

All three deals were significantly below the biotechs' IPOs: Cadence went public in October 2006 at $9, Affymax went public in December 2006 at $25 and Algeta went public in March 2007 at NOK47...