Aveo Pharma delays IPO, at least briefly

Aveo Pharmaceuticals kept the biotech investment community on pins and needles this morning. The cancer drug developer was supposed to price its shares for a $105 million IPO yesterday, but reportedly pushed that back to today in the face of shareholder resistance to the share price.

The Wall Street Journal reported the resistance at the end of a lengthy piece today on the bullish investor response to Sensata, a venture-backed company that was able to hold on to its price range and trade higher on the first day--a first for the year.

After a brief surge of hope that 2010 would see a big surge of biotech IPOs after a lengthy dry spell, the first developers to make it into the market all stumbled badly. Ironwood seriously overreached on its projected share price and Anthera raised $42 million in an IPO recently after chopping its share price in half.

- here's the report from the Wall Street Journal, with the Aveo news mentioned at the end

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