Diversa Corp. announced today its initial public offering of 8,337,500 shares of its common stock at a price of $24.00 per share, which includes the exercise of 1,087,500 shares of the over-allotment option granted to the underwriters. 

Gross proceeds to the company from the sale of the shares of common stock will be $200.1 million, before deducting expenses for the offering and underwriting discounts and commissions. Bear, Stearns & Co. acted as the lead managing underwriter for the offering and Chase H&Q and Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown acted as co-managers. 

Copies of the prospectus relating to the offering may be obtained from: Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc., 245 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10167; Chase H&Q, One Bush Street, 11th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94104; or Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown, One South Street, Baltimore, MD 21202. 

Diversa Corp. is a global leader in discovering and developing novel enzymes and other biologically active compounds from diverse environmental sources for use in agricultural, chemical processing, industrial and pharmaceutical applications. The company applies its fully-integrated and proprietary processes to obtain previously unaccessed genetic material from uncultured organisms found in various natural environments, catalog and store genes in gene libraries, screen these libraries using methods capable of analyzing more than a billion genes per day, optimize selected enzymes and compounds by applying its proprietary gene evolution technologies, including Gene Site Saturation Mutagenesis (GSSM(TM)) and GeneReassembly(TM), and develop novel host organisms for the manufacture of resulting products. 

The company has entered into a number of strategic alliances with market leaders across multiple industries, including: Novartis Seeds AG, Novartis Agribusiness Biotechnology Research Inc., The Dow Chemical Co., Rhone-Poulenc Animal Nutrition S.A. and Finnfeeds International Ltd. Diversa Corp. was formed in 1994 as a venture-backed company. Diversa received initial funding from HealthCare Ventures, and subsequently from Patricof & Co. Ventures Inc. 

Company news release
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