SciClone Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (SCLN)

SciClone Pharmaceuticals was a specialty pharmaceutical company that, although incorporated and headquartered in Foster City, California, earned nearly all of its revenue in China. It sold a portfolio of branded drugs to Chinese hospitals, covering oncology, infectious disease and cardiovascular conditions, and it ran a large sales force inside the country. It also promoted products for other drug makers under partnership agreements and licensed in treatments developed elsewhere for the Chinese market.

The company's lead product for decades was ZADAXIN, its brand of thymalfasin, a synthetic peptide used to support the immune system. ZADAXIN was approved in more than 30 countries and was prescribed in China for chronic hepatitis B, for some cancers and as an immune enhancer. SciClone added other products over time, including the DC Bead embolization device for liver cancer, to reduce its dependence on that one drug.

SciClone's common stock traded on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the ticker SCLN for many years. Because its business was concentrated in China, the stock was influenced by Chinese drug pricing policy, hospital tendering rules and government anti-corruption campaigns, as well as by competition from generic versions of thymalfasin. The company generated steady profits and cash in its later years as a public company and repurchased shares.

In June 2017 SciClone agreed to be acquired by a consortium led by GL Capital, a Chinese healthcare-focused investment firm, together with Bank of China Group Investment, CDH Investments, Ascendent Capital Partners and Boying Investments. Holders were offered $11.18 per share in cash. Stockholders approved the merger at a special meeting on September 27, 2017, and the transaction closed on October 13, 2017.

On the closing date each outstanding share was converted into the right to receive the cash price, SciClone became a wholly owned subsidiary of the buyers' holding company, and NASDAQ suspended trading in the stock. The company then filed to end its SEC reporting. SciClone continued operating as a privately held drug company focused on China, and its former SCLN shares no longer exist.