Telix's $1.65B ITM Buy, Priority's $1.6B Take-Private, and Four More Deals

Six transactions announced between September 17 and September 23, 2026 carry enough public detail to compare, and all six are signed or completed rather than reported talks. Four are outright purchases of operating businesses: a radiopharmaceutical manufacturer, a payments processor, a North American IT infrastructure provider, and a stake in a stablecoin issuer. Two are research and licence agreements in biotechnology, where most of the headline value depends on what the partners deliver in the clinic. The entries run below from the largest disclosed value to the smallest.

Telix Pharmaceuticals agreed to acquire all of ITM Isotope Technologies Munich for $1.65 billion in cash upfront, with up to $700 million more payable on milestones that include FDA approvals for ITM's lead therapy, and more than $300 million of ITM debt assumed at closing. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year. On completion, Telix shareholders will own about 76.3% of the combined company and ITM's backers about 23.7%. 1 The two companies expect combined unaudited revenue and income above $1.3 billion this year, against ITM's own revenue of $273 million in 2025. 1

What Telix is buying first is factory capacity. Radiopharmaceuticals decay, so they have to be made close to the patient and delivered quickly, and ITM already runs a production and distribution network covering more than 65 countries. 1 Analysts at William Blair called the transaction "supercritical" for that reason, writing that it deepens Telix's manufacturing capabilities and "de-risks one of the most complex aspects of operating a radiopharmaceutical company." 1

The therapy attached to the deal is ITM-11, a lutetium-177 compound that targets the somatostatin receptor for gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumours, a cancer of the pancreas and digestive tract. It is also in a Phase 3 trial for lung and thymic neuroendocrine tumours, with topline data expected in 2029. The FDA sent ITM a complete response letter in August 2026 over chemistry, manufacturing and controls at a third-party facility, and ITM has said the agency raised no clinical safety or efficacy concerns about the drug. 18 Approval would put Telix into commercial competition with Novartis, whose two lutetium-177 products sold $816 million and nearly $2 billion respectively in 2025. 1

Priority Technology Holdings said on September 21 that it had agreed to be taken private by a group led by its chairman and chief executive, Thomas Priore, in a transaction valued at about $1.6 billion. The group will pay $8.05 per share in cash for the shares it does not already own. That price is 65% above the stock's unaffected level before the initial proposal became public in November 2025, and more than 30% above Priore's opening offer of $6.00 to $6.15 per share. Funds advised by Searchlight Capital Partners have provided equity commitments for the purchase, and a special committee of independent directors recommended it unanimously. 2

The agreement carries a $15.75 million termination fee payable by Priority and a $35.25 million reverse-termination fee payable by the buyer, and the transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2027. 2

Priority supplies payment acceptance and banking services: the machinery that lets a software platform or a small business take card payments, hold deposits and move money. 9 The company said nothing about its plans beyond the price, and the negotiation record is the only public account of the buyer's reasoning: the proposal sat open for ten months and finished at a price roughly a third above where it started, which is what the special committee extracted for shareholders who had no other bid on the table. 2

Orbis Medicines said on September 17 that it had signed a strategic collaboration and licence agreement with Novo Nordisk covering oral macrocycle drugs for cardiometabolic disease, the category that includes obesity and diabetes. Orbis is eligible for up to $1.4 billion in upfront and potential development and commercial milestone payments, plus tiered royalties on future sales, and Novo will also make an equity investment in the company. The two sides did not disclose the size of the upfront payment or of that investment. 310

The technology under licence is Orbis's nGen platform, which pairs generative AI with automated chemistry to design macrocycles — ring-shaped molecules — that survive digestion and can be swallowed rather than injected. Macrocycle drugs have been hard to make orally available, and macrocycles already work as medicines when delivered by injection, which is why the platform targets molecules that displace injectable products. Orbis is based in Copenhagen and Lausanne and has raised €116 million in venture funding, including a €90 million Series A led by NEA, with Lilly Ventures, Cormorant, EIFO, Forbion and Novo Holdings among the investors. Novo Holdings is the investment company that controls Novo Nordisk; this week's strategic investment comes from the drugmaker itself. 3

The agreement is signed, and what remains uncertain is the price split rather than the commitment: with the upfront fee undisclosed, a reader cannot tell from the announcement how much Novo Nordisk has paid for access and how much is contingent on Orbis's molecules reaching patients.

Softcat, a UK-listed provider of IT infrastructure, has agreed to acquire General Datatech in a deal that values the Dallas-based company at $1.05 billion (£785 million) enterprise value on a cash-free, debt-free basis. GDT announced the agreement on September 17, and Softcat's regulatory announcement followed on the London Stock Exchange. GDT is being sold by its private equity owner, H.I.G. Capital, and closing is expected by the end of the first quarter of 2027, subject to regulatory clearances. 4511

GDT designs, installs and supports corporate data centres and networks, and describes itself as delivering secure, carrier-grade infrastructure to enterprise customers. Softcat's business is largely IT procurement and lifecycle management in the UK and Ireland. Buying GDT gives it engineering and delivery capability in North America, and a business that keeps its name, leadership team and workforce as a wholly owned subsidiary. 4 Softcat sells IT infrastructure and solutions rather than software, a distinction that matters for this briefing: no acquisition of a software company with disclosed terms cleared the inclusion bar this week, and this entry sits in the technology-consolidation column instead.

Dualitas Therapeutics, a biotechnology company founded in 2023, said on September 17 that it had signed a research collaboration and licence agreement with Roche. Dualitas receives $36.5 million upfront and is eligible for research, development and commercial milestone payments worth up to a potential $1 billion in total, plus tiered royalties. Roche takes responsibility for all subsequent preclinical development, regulatory work, manufacturing and commercialisation. 6

The work itself is a search. Dualitas will use its DualScreen discovery engine to screen more than 300,000 bispecific antibody combinations against immunology and inflammation targets, a scale the company says has not been attempted before. Conventional bispecific programmes start from a predetermined pair of targets; DualScreen screens whole cell surfaces to find pairs whose combination produces a stronger effect than either antibody achieves alone. Dualitas is also running its own programmes in rheumatoid arthritis, allergic disease, and dermatologic and gastrointestinal autoimmune conditions, with a first candidate due in the clinic next year. 6 Roche's head of corporate business development, Boris L. Zaïtra, said in the announcement that bispecific antibodies "remain central to Roche's portfolio strategy across many disease areas," and that the company intends to keep pushing the field through external partnerships. 6

A $36.5 million upfront payment against a $1 billion headline is a small down payment. Roche is buying an option on a discovery process rather than a drug, and the milestone structure is what limits its exposure if the screening programme produces nothing that can be developed.

Circle Internet Group disclosed in a regulatory filing that on September 17 it issued and sold about 1.24 million shares to Binance at $80.84 each, for roughly $100 million. The share sale sits inside a broader commercial agreement with a five-year term, under which Circle agreed to pay Binance a monthly incentive fee and Binance agreed to promote USDC on its platform. Either company can end the arrangement early under specified circumstances. 7

Circle issues USDC, a dollar-pegged stablecoin with a market capitalisation of nearly $75 billion, and its own market value is about $24 billion, with the shares up roughly 19% this year. Binance is paying for a financial interest in the token it is also being paid to distribute, which aligns the exchange's revenue with the size of the token's circulation. 7

Three of this week's entries separate the amount committed at signing from the total the headline reports, and the gap runs from large to nearly total. Novo Nordisk and Orbis Medicines announced up to $1.4 billion with the upfront fee left undisclosed, so the split between cash paid now and cash paid on delivery cannot be established from the announcement. Roche pays $36.5 million of a potential $1 billion, which puts more than 96% of the headline behind research, development and sales milestones. Telix commits its $1.65 billion upfront, then adds up to $700 million of milestones and more than $300 million of assumed debt on top. Reading those three figures side by side requires the structure beside each one, and the week's two fixed-price purchases — Softcat's $1.05 billion and Priority's $1.6 billion — are the cleanest numbers in the issue because a single cash price covers the whole consideration. 12346

The three largest transactions in this issue each buy a network that is already running. ITM brings radioisotope manufacturing and distribution across more than 65 countries, the part of radiopharmaceuticals that William Blair told clients is hardest to operate. GDT brings data-centre and networking engineering teams and a North American customer base that Softcat, a UK and Ireland business, has been looking for. Circle's USDC gains the distribution reach of the largest crypto exchange, with Binance paid a monthly fee to promote the token. In each case the acquirer adds capital or a customer relationship to capacity that exists on day one, and the seller's network is what the price reflects. 1711

Three of this week's transactions tie the parties together through share ownership on top of the commercial terms. Binance takes stock in the company whose token it will promote, which turns a distribution deal into a position in the issuer. Novo Nordisk takes a strategic equity investment in Orbis Medicines alongside the licence, adding to a shareholder register that already includes Novo Holdings, the investment company that controls the drugmaker. Telix pays cash for ITM while ITM's backers stay in the business, ending up with about 23.7% of the combined company. The pattern extends a variant seen in the previous issue's Bending Spoons purchase of Miro, where the sellers reinvested $295 million of their proceeds into the buyer's equity: the seller keeps part of the upside in exchange for accepting exposure to how the buyer runs the business. 13712

This issue covers announcement and report dates from September 17 through September 23, 2026 inclusive, and lists entries in descending order of disclosed value. It draws on Reuters, BioSpace and PR Newswire reporting, the announcements published by GDT, Softcat, Orbis Medicines, Dualitas Therapeutics and Circle, ITM Isotope Technologies' own disclosure of its FDA correspondence, and PE Hub's report on the sale of GDT by H.I.G. Capital.

Three transactions closed during the window that this issue leaves out because their agreements were reached earlier: Progress Software completed its $400 million purchase of Domo's AI and data platform business on September 22 1314, Wolters Kluwer completed its acquisition of the tax workflow software provider XCM Solutions 15, and Capgemini completed its $3.3 billion acquisition of WNS 16.

Enterprise software produced no qualifying entry again this week, and the technology slot in this issue sits with an IT infrastructure provider instead. The software candidates that surfaced in the wires and in buyers' own newsrooms carried undisclosed prices.

Candidates considered and left out for want of disclosed terms or for sitting outside the three sectors: NIQ's friendly takeover bid for the Australian consumer data company The U Group, announced September 22, where the bidder's statement carried no price 17; the reported joint bid by CD&R and Warburg Pincus for Canaccord Genuity's British wealth arm, which has no disclosed value 18; and Mitsubishi's $709.5 million purchase of a larger stake in the Philippine conglomerate Ayala 19. A seventh biotech candidate was dropped to keep the issue at six entries: the reverse merger through which North Immunology is taking Aethlon Medical public, announced September 17, which brings a $180 million private placement to an antibody for atopic dermatitis 20.