It's probably just my over-active imagination, but does anyone...

It's probably just my over-active imagination, but does anyone else see the coincidence of Calimmune and Benitec now having nearly identical amounts of cash in the bank after Calimmune raised cash yesterday? Seeing as they are the only two companies in the world with clinical trials using ddRNAi (apart from Gradalis, but we'll leave that alone for the moment), both have offices/labs in Sydney and California, both have RA Capital on board, both have a joint interest in each others success, several highly respected members of each others scientific boards, and are at similar stages of development, wouldn't it make sense to merge?

Surely, the investment community would take a company with a combined cash position of @ $50m, with a dozen candidates in pre-clinical development, and 43 employees more seriously than either of these companies alone and be more inclined to participate in an IPO. Seriously, compared to Dicerna when they IPOed, giving them a value of $us750m (though their market cap has since fallen considerably) a merger would surely see a much higher valuation given their much greater pipeline and clinical advancement.

I really don't see that Calimmune, even with the cash they raised, would have sufficient funds to tackle their 4 planned clinical trials in addition to their current PI/II. And, we know that they have been employing staff in Sydney for planned clinical trials.

Perhaps this is Benitec's plan all along. Surely they would not attempt to IPO unless there was something interesting in the works.