Category: 3. Business

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By Steve Goldstein

Viking Therapeutics’ stock was crushed after a mid-stage trial of its oral weight-loss drug.

Viking Therapeutics Inc. on Tuesday announced that a trial showed its oral weight-loss drug works – and like a larger rival, its stock price immediately suffered.

Viking’s stock (VKTX) dived 40% in early trade.

Eli Lilly & Co. (LLY), which is developing its own weight-loss drug, orforglipron, had seen its stock crater 14% earlier this month when it said the medication resulted in weight loss of up to 12.4%.

San Diego-based Viking said a Phase 2 trial on its VK2735 oral weight-loss drug – of the same class of drugs like Ozempic that mimic the effects of the glucagon-like peptide 1 hormone – resulted in weight loss of up to 12.2%, or 26.6 pounds on average, after 13 weeks of treatment.

That compared with a weight loss of 1.3% for those taking a placebo pill.

At the highest dose, 38% discontinued treatment early, while 18% taking the placebo similarly stopped treatment. Of those taking the pill, 98% of side effects were categorized as mild or moderate in severity.

Evan Seigerman, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said investors had expected strong efficacy with a “squeaky clean tolerability profile” but the trial only delivered on effectiveness, due to the rates of treatment discontinuation and vomiting at top dosing.

On a conference call, analysts said they were puzzled by the high discontinuation rate – especially in the placebo group.

“We noted in earlier comments, the placebo rates have escalated a little bit,” said Chief Executive Brian Lian, according to a transcript from S&P Global Market Intelligence. He added, “Everybody knows somebody who’s on a GLP-1 therapy and everybody knows the GI [gastrointestinal] adverse events that are sort of expected from this mechanism.”

-Steve Goldstein

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  08-19-25 1002ET
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(Reuters) -Venture investor Chamath Palihapitiya, dubbed Wall Street’s “SPAC king” for his high-profile blank-check deals, is set to take his latest special purpose acquisition vehicle public, marking his return to the market after several years.

American Exceptionalism Acquisition Corp, chaired by Palihapitiya, will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ‘AEXA’, a filing showed late on Monday. The SPAC plans to raise $250 million to target companies in artificial intelligence, energy, decentralized finance and defense sectors.

A SPAC is a shell firm that raises money through an IPO to merge with a private business and take it public, offering companies an alternative route to the market that bypasses the longer and more costly traditional IPO process.

SPAC deals hit record levels in 2020 and 2021, before activity slowed sharply in the following years as regulatory scrutiny increased and investors soured on the once-popular vehicle.

During the peak, several Wall Street heavyweights, including billionaire investors Bill Ackman and Michael Klein, joined Palihapitiya in betting on SPACs as the next big trend in the listings market.

Despite backing from big-name investors, many SPACs failed to secure merger targets, while others completed deals with heavy redemptions or saw their shares plunge after debut.

But Palihapitiya strongly believes in the vehicle. “When I raised my first SPAC in 2017, I wanted to help correct an increasingly unstable balance between the private and public markets,” he said in a letter to investors.

“While SPACs are not the solution for every issue in the IPO process, I continue to believe that they have an important piece to play in capital formation – and especially now.”

SoFi Technologies is among Palihapitiya’s most successful bets, with the consumer lender now valued at nearly $29 billion. In January 2021, it had agreed to go public in a blank-check deal valued at around $8.65 billion.

(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

Air Canada flight attendants say they have reached a “tentative” deal with the airline to end a strike over wages and ground work that has cancelled travel for half a million people worldwide.

Roughly 10,000 flight attendants walked off the job after midnight Saturday, insisting Air Canada had failed to address their demands for higher pay and compensation for unpaid ground work, including during boarding.

The attendants’ union defied two orders from a regulatory tribunal to return to work, forcing Air Canada to roll back plans to partially restore service.

But after resuming talks on Monday evening, the union said it had reached a potential deal with the airline that it would put to its members for consideration.

“The strike has ended. We have a tentative agreement we will bring forward to you,” the Canadian Union of Public Employees’ (Cupe) Air Canada branch said in a statement.

“We are required to advise our membership that we must fully cooperate with resumption of operations,” the statement said.

Air Canada said in a statement that it would “gradually restart its operations” after reaching an agreement with Cupe through a mediator, William Kaplan.

It said the first flights were scheduled for Tuesday evening but warned that full service may not return for seven to 10 days.

“Restarting a major carrier like Air Canada is a complex undertaking. Full restoration may require a week or more,” Air Canada president Michael Rousseau said.

Neither the union nor the airline immediately provided details of the proposed agreement.

But Cupe said the deal achieves “transformational change for our industry after a historic fight”.

“Unpaid work is over,” it added, a reference to a key demand throughout the talks that flight attendants also be compensated for time not spent in the air.

“When our rights were taken away, we stood strong, we fought back – and we secured a tentative agreement that our members can vote on,” Cupe further said.

Air Canada said it would not comment on the terms of the deal “until the ratification process is complete”.

It was not immediately clear when Cupe would schedule a vote.

More travel disruption

Air Canada – the national carrier which flies directly to 180 cities domestically and abroad – has said the strike forced cancellations impacting 500,000 people.

Over the weekend, federal labor minister Patty Hajdu invoked a legal provision to halt the strike and force both sides into binding arbitration.

Following that intervention, the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB), a regulatory tribunal, ordered the flight attendants back to work in two separate orders – on Sunday and Monday.

But the union said it would not comply with the orders, forcing Air Canada to walk back service resumption plans.

Air Canada told customers on Tuesday to expect continued disruption “as aircraft and crew are out of position”.

It urged passengers to only travel to the airport if their flight was shown as operating.

“The suspension of our service is extremely difficult for our customers. We deeply regret and apologize for the impact on them of this labour disruption,” Rousseau said.

Prime minister Mark Carney told reporters Monday it was “disappointing” that eight months of negotiations between the carrier and union had not produced an agreement.

He said it was “important” that flight attendants were “compensated equitably”, but voiced unease that hundreds of thousands of people were facing travel uncertainty.