University of Manchester (UoM) is to take shares in engineering group Versarien PLC (LON:VRS) at a massive premium to the market price following on from the sale of 2- DTech.
Versarien acquired 85% of graphene application specialist 2-DTech in 2014 from the university.
This latest agreement will see £191,500 of loans and collaboration fees converted into Versarien shares at a price of 19.14p, compared with a current market price of 11.65p. The new shares amount to 0.83% of Versarien’s shares in issue. UoM owns the remaining 15% of 2-DTech.
Neill Ricketts, Versarien’s chief executive, said: “This deal further strengthens the relationship between the company and UoM, the home of graphene.”
Clive Rowland, chief executive of UMI3, UoM's innovation company, said graphene applications are coming ever closer to becoming products and the involvement with 2-DTech was an important bridge between the work taking place on campus and potential customers for graphene in a range of industry sectors.