Thursday, March 5, 2015

Essa appoints Berger to board

2015-03-05 18:45 ET - News Release

Mr. Bob Rieder reports
ESSA PHARMA INC. ANNOUNCES APPOINTMENT OF NEW DIRECTOR
Essa Pharma Inc. has appointed Franklin Berger to its board of directors. Mr. Berger's appointment as an independent director is effective immediately. A resident of New York, Mr. Berger's background includes strategic advisory work with top-tier venture capital firms and international biopharmaceutical companies.

"We are delighted to have Franklin join our board," stated Richard Glickman, Chairman of the Essa board of directors. "As an investor in Essa, he has a serious stake in our success. As a deeply experienced strategic advisor, he will bring an invaluable perspective to our strategy decisions." Mr. Berger spent 12 years in sell-side equity research, most recently as Managing Director, U.S. Equity Research at J. P. Morgan Securities, Inc. ("JPM") from May 1998 to March 2003. During his five years at JPM, he was involved with the issuance of over $12 billion in biotechnology company equity or equity-linked securities. The majority of these transactions were book-run and lead-managed by the JPM biotech team. He was associated with several notable financings in the biotechnology sector including the Genentech Inc. initial public offering, the first large Celgene Corporation financings as well as financings of several large-cap biotechnology companies in their rapid growth phase. His team covered 26 publicly-traded biotechnology companies. Mr. Berger began his career as a sell-side analyst at Josephthal & Co. in 1991, subsequently moving to Salomon Smith Barney in 1997 serving as Director, Equity Research and Senior Biotechnology Analyst. Mr. Berger currently serves on the board of directors of three public biotechnology companies: Five Prime Therapeutics, Inc., Immune Design Corp. and Bellus Health, Inc. Previous public company board service included 11 years with Seattle Genetics, Inc., seven years with VaxGen, Inc. and Aurinia Pharmaceuticals Inc. (previously Isotechnika Pharma Inc.), based in Canada. He also serves or has served on private biotech company boards of directors including iTherX Pharma, Inc., Caprion Proteomics Inc. (sold in July 2012), and ViroChem Pharma, Inc. which was purchased by Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. for $400 million in 2009. Mr. Berger has led multiple M&A analyses resulting in greater than $1 billion in transaction value.

The Company previously announced on January 27, 2015 the commencement of trading as a public company on the TSX Venture Exchange, and the filing with the SEC on February 25, 2015 of a registration statement on Form 20-F to register its common shares under the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. This filing is an initial step in the process of seeking a listing on a US-based exchange.
We seek Safe Harbor.

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