Cempra Pharmaceuticals expects the offering price for its planned IPO to be between $11 and $13, the Chapel Hill company reported in a regulatory filing last week.

The company, which filed to go public in October, had earlier said it hoped to raise nearly $90 million through the offering.

Cempra is developing treatments for drug-resistant skin infections and pneumonia. The company has two antibiotics in clinical trials.

One targets patients with pneumonia. The other is being tested as a treatment for skin infections, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.
 

Durham startup Semprius has raised $20.6 million in equity funding, the company reported in a regulatory filing today.

Last week, Semprius announced that corporate giant Siemens had acquired a 16 percent stake in the company, which is developing next-generation solar devices.

Terms of that investment weren't disclosed.

Semprius CEO Joe Carr declined to say today whether the $20.6 million included the Siemens investment.

He said the company would release more detailed information about the funding round next week.

Semprius is also seeking to raise an additional $9.3 million in equity funding, according to the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The additional capital will be used to build a plant to manufacture Semprius' solar cells.

There's a Research Triangle Park connection to the insider trading charges filed late last week by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Robert Moffat Jr., one of six senior executives arrested in what the SEC is calling a "massive insider trading scheme," was earlier this decade general manager for IBM's PC manufacturing unit in RTP.

The SEC has accused Moffat, 53, of providing insider information to Danielle Chiesi, 43, a hedge fund trader, during 2008 and 2009. Moffat was a senior vice president and head of the company's supply chain at the time of the alleged crimes.

He has been placed on a leave of absence by the company.

The SEC's case centers around Raj Rajaratnam, portfolio manager for the hedge fund Galleon Group. Other executives arrested worked for Intel and McKinsey & Co.

Moffat's lawyer told the Wall Street Journal that his client "was shocked by the charges and hopes for a favorable outcome."

Bowl games in red

SEC

ACC (6-6)

Florida 45, Florida State 14
Florida 26, Miami 3
South Carolina 34, N.C. State 0
Alabama 34, Clemson 10
Vanderbilt 16, BC 14
LSU 38, Georgia Tech 3

Last Saturday’s SEC Championship was the highest-rated college football game of the season, The Nielsen Co. reports. Florida's victory over Alabama on CBS drew a 9.3 rating — it was seen in 9.3 percent of the nation's households by an estimated 15.1 million viewers, making it the most watched SEC Championship ever and the highest-rated, non-bowl game since 2006.

ABC’s "Saturday Night Football" had six of the top seven games. Not surprisingly, given the way the season played out, Big 12 games dominated the top 10, with seven of the top nine broadcasts.

No sign of the ACC in the top 10, which follows:

Rank Time/date Network Game Rating
1. 4 p.m. Dec. 6 CBS SEC Champ: Alabama-Florida 9.3
2. 8 p.m. Nov. 1 ABC Texas-Texas Tech 7.5
3. 8 p.m. Sept. 13 ABC Ohio State-USC 6.9
4. 8 p.m. Nov. 22 ABC Texas Tech-Oklahoma 6.6
5. 8 p.m. Oct. 25 ABC Penn State-Ohio State 6.4
6. 8 p.m. Nov. 29 ABC Oklahoma-Okla. St. 5.7
7. 8 p.m. Dec. 6 ABC Big 12 Champ.: Missouri-Okla. 5.5
8. 8 p.m. Nov. 8 ABC Okla. St.-Texas Tech; Cal-USC 5.3
9. 12 p.m. Oct. 11 ABC Texas-Oklahoma 5.2
10. 3:30 p.m. Nov. 8 CBS Alabama-LSU 5.1

The ACC title game, in which Virginia Tech whipped Boston College, drew a 2.6 rating on ABC.

When Notre Dame plays Boston College at 8 p.m. Nov. 8 on either ABC or ESPN, it will be the first Saturday prime-time telecast involving an ACC football team in three weeks. If only the major broadcast networks and ESPN are counted, and not ESPN2, it will be the ACC's first Saturday prime-time appearance since Sept. 27, when Virginia Tech defeated Nebraska 35-30.

There's more to it than which games the networks like — contractual restrictions, preseason scheduling — but that's definitely a factor. This year's ACC story lines simply aren't blowing away network executives.

So far this season, 10 games involving ACC teams have been aired in prime-time — four on ESPN on Thursday night and three on ESPN2 on Saturday night. Of the three other Saturday prime-time games, two involved Southeastern Conference teams, and all three took place in August or September.

SEC teams, by comparison, have hit prime-time in 15 games this season — three on Thursday night, two on ESPN2.

ESPN and ACC officials note that the Thursday night telecasts are considered marquee games that are scheduled before the season, and the ACC's Mike Finn says some of the conference's better games have been played that night.

ESPN also is somewhat restricted by the SEC's contract with CBS, which usually televises its SEC games at 3:30 p.m. Saturdays. ESPN can't go against CBS with an SEC team or teams in that time slot, which leaves an earlier slot Saturday or prime time — 8-11 p.m. — for ESPN. That means ESPN's SEC games Saturday tend to be shown in prime time.

That said, ESPN wants ranked teams with the most compelling stories on the air in prime time. Three SEC teams are ranked in the top 10 of the latest Associated Press poll — No. 2 Alabama, No. 5 Florida and No. 8 Georgia — LSU sitting at 15th. The ACC is flying under the radar with Florida State at No. 16, UNC at No. 21 and Maryland at No. 25.

The big guns brought via expansion — Virginia Tech, Miami and Boston College — have eight losses among them.

To TV networks, ratings ultimately mean more than rankings. A look at three broadcast network football telecasts on Saturday night shows little difference. Alabama-Clemson on ABC on Aug. 30, Virginia Tech-Nebraska on ABC on Sept. 27, and LSU-Florida on CBS on Oct. 11 all reached about 4 million to 4.3 households, according to Nielsen Media Research.

In Nielsen's weekly cable network top 40 listings through Oct. 19, however, the only ACC team to make it was Miami in its 26-3 loss to Florida on ESPN on Sept. 6. In addition to that game, the SEC accounted for three other top-40 games, according to Nielsen.

Two items of note regarding college and pro football:

1. It's clear that the SEC has lost all sense of perspective when the offensive coordinator for the No. 20 team in the country is fired less than three months into his first season on the job. Yes, it's the best football conference. ("God's conference," as a Vanderbilt alumni friend of mine used to declare on a regular basis long before Vanderbilt was any good.) But at what cost?

2. A member of the N&O sports staff declared in a staff meeting this summer that Joe Flacco would be "the worst quarterback in the history of football." I wrote down those words, because I have a higher opinion of I-AA football than he/she does. So far, so good. Sure, running the Ravens' offense isn't exactly the way to get to the Hall of Fame. But it's hard to call the kid a bust now.