By Randall Osborne

West Coast Editor

Genomics companies Lion Bioscience AG and Compugen Ltd. priced their initial public offerings to raise $181.56 million and $50 million, respectively, each garnering somewhat less than expected.

Heidelberg, Germany-based Lion offered 4.57 million shares in a dual offering in the U.S. and Germany. In the U.S., the offering consists of American depository shares (ADS), with each ADS representing one ordinary share, for $39.683 each.

ADS shares will trade on Nasdaq under the symbol LEON, and on the Neuer Markt segment of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under LIO. The shares gained 27 percent Friday to close at $49.50.

Lion granted underwriters an option to buy up to an additional 606,125 shares, and an institutional shareholder of Lion has granted the underwriters an option to purchase up to an additional 79,500 shares to cover overallotments.

The global coordinator and book-runner for the offering was Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and the joint lead manager was Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown.

Focused on genomics and bioinformatics, Lion said it was aiming to raise as much as $191 million. (See BioWorld Today, July 12, 2000, p. 1.)

Compugen, of Tel Aviv, Israel, said it intended to reap a middle range of $55 million for research and development, sales and marketing, possible acquisitions and other general corporate purposes in its computational genomics efforts. (See BioWorld Today, July 21, 2000, p. 1.)

The Compugen IPO shares are being offered through underwriters led by Robertson Stephens Inc., U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray Inc. and Invemed Associates LLC. Compugen granted underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 750,000 additional shares to cover overallotments.

The company blends advanced mathematics, computer science and molecular biology in its LEADS bioinformatics platform for analysis of expressed sequence tag and genomics data, as well as polymorphism detection and qualification.

Compugen's stock (NASDAQ:CGEN) closed Friday at $11.125, up $1.125.