Finance
Palvella Therapeutics Appoints Matthew E. Korenberg as Chief Financial Officer
Mr. Korenberg is a seasoned executive with significant operational and financial leadership experience, including senior roles at Ligand Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: LGND) and in healthcare investment banking at Goldman Sachs
WAYNE, Pa., Oct. 17, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Palvella Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing novel therapies to treat patients suffering from serious, rare genetic skin diseases for which there are no FDA-approved therapies, today announced the appointment of Matthew E. Korenberg as Chief Financial Officer, effective immediately. Mr. Korenberg is a seasoned operational and financial leader with more than 27 years of senior executive experience in biotech companies and healthcare investment banking. Throughout his career, he has focused on capital raising, partnering and licensing deals, acquisitions, as well as overseeing public company operations related to investor relations and public reporting.
“I am thrilled to welcome Matt to the Palvella senior leadership team. Matt’s proven track record in public company corporate finance and strategy, operations, and capital markets will be instrumental to Palvella as we advance our rare disease pipeline and progress our lead product candidate QTORIN™ rapamycin to potential regulatory approvals and U.S. commercialization,” said Wes Kaupinen, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Palvella. “We look forward to Matt’s significant contributions as we work towards achieving our vision of becoming the leading rare disease company focused on developing and commercializing novel therapies to treat patients suffering from serious, rare genetic skin diseases.”
Mr. Korenberg joins Palvella from Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: LGND), where he served as President and Chief Operating Officer since 2022 and Chief Financial Officer from 2015 to 2022. Prior to Ligand Pharmaceuticals, Mr. Korenberg was the founder, Chief Executive Officer, and a director of NeuroCircuit Therapeutics, a company focused on developing drugs to treat genetic disorders of the brain with an initial focus on Down syndrome. Mr. Korenberg previously served as a Managing Director and member of the healthcare investment banking team at The Goldman Sachs Group from 1999 to 2013. During his 14-year tenure at Goldman Sachs, Mr. Korenberg focused on advising and financing companies in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors. Mr. Korenberg currently serves on the board of directors, including the audit committee, of Lifecore Biomedical Inc. (NASDAQ: LFCR), a fully integrated contract development and manufacturing organization. He earned a B.B.A. in Finance and Accounting from the University of Michigan.
“I am excited to join Palvella at such a dynamic time. The combination of a dedicated leadership team, patented QTORIN™ platform technology, and promising late-stage rare disease pipeline position the company well for growth,” said Mr. Korenberg. “I look forward to leading Palvella’s transformation to a public company and addressing the unmet needs of people with serious, rare genetic skin diseases.”
About Palvella Therapeutics
Founded and led by rare drug disease drug development veterans, Palvella Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing novel therapies to treat patients suffering from serious, rare genetic skin diseases for which there are no FDA-approved therapies. Palvella is developing a broad pipeline of product candidates based on its patented QTORIN™ platform, with an initial focus on serious, rare genetic skin diseases, many of which are lifelong in nature. Palvella’s lead product candidate, QTORIN 3.9% rapamycin anhydrous gel (QTORIN™ rapamycin), is currently in clinical development for microcystic lymphatic malformations (microcystic LMs) and cutaneous venous malformations.
In July 2024, Palvella and Pieris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: PIRS) announced they have entered into a definitive merger agreement to combine the companies in an all-stock transaction.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements concerning the development and commercialization of Palvella’s products, the potential benefits and attributes of such products, and the company’s expectations regarding its prospects, including the potential merger with Pieris Pharmaceuticals. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks, assumptions and uncertainties that could cause actual future events or results to differ materially from such statements. These statements are made as of the date of this press release. Actual results may vary. Palvella undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements for any reason.
No Offer or Solicitation
This press release is not intended to and does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to subscribe for or buy or an invitation to purchase or subscribe for any securities or the solicitation of any vote in any jurisdiction pursuant to the proposed transaction or otherwise, nor shall there be any sale, issuance or transfer of securities in any jurisdiction in contravention of applicable law. No offer of securities shall be made except by means of a prospectus meeting the requirements of the Securities Act. Subject to certain exceptions to be approved by the relevant regulators or certain facts to be ascertained, the public offer will not be made directly or indirectly, in or into any jurisdiction where to do so would constitute a violation of the laws of such jurisdiction, or by use of the mails or by any means or instrumentality (including without limitation, telephone and the internet) of interstate or foreign commerce, or any facility of a national securities exchange, of any such jurisdiction.
NEITHER THE SEC NOR ANY STATE SECURITIES COMMISSION HAS APPROVED OR DISAPPROVED OF THE SECURITIES OR DETERMINED IF THIS PRESS RELEASE IS TRUTHFUL OR COMPLETE.
Important Additional Information About the Proposed Transactions Will be Filed with the SEC
In connection with the proposed transaction between Pieris and Palvella, Pieris intends to file relevant materials with the SEC, including a registration statement on Form S-4 that will contain a proxy statement and prospectus of Pieris and an information statement of Palvella. PIERIS URGES INVESTORS AND STOCKHOLDERS TO READ THESE MATERIALS CAREFULLY AND IN THEIR ENTIRETY WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE, AS WELL AS ANY AMENDMENTS OR SUPPLEMENTS TO THESE MATERIALS, BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT PIERIS, PALVELLA, THE PROPOSED TRANSACTION AND RELATED MATTERS. Investors and stockholders will be able to obtain free copies of the proxy statement/prospectus/information statement and other documents filed by Pieris with the SEC (when they become available) through the website maintained by the SEC at www.sec.gov. In addition, investors and stockholders will be able to obtain free copies of the proxy statement/prospectus/information statement and other documents filed by Pieris with the SEC free of charge on Pieris’ website at www.pieris.com, or by contacting Investor Relations by email at info@pieris.com. Investors and stockholders are urged to read the proxy statement/prospectus/information statement and the other relevant materials when they become available before making any voting or investment decision with respect to the proposed transaction.
Participants in the Solicitation
Palvella, Pieris and their respective directors and executive officers may be considered participants in the solicitation of proxies in connection with the proposed transaction. Information about Pieris’ directors and executive officers is included in Pieris’ most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, as amended, including any information incorporated therein by reference, as filed with the SEC on March 29, 2024, and amended on April 29, 2024. Additional information regarding the persons who may be deemed participants in the solicitation of proxies will be included in the proxy statement/prospectus/information statement relating to the proposed transaction when it is filed with the SEC. These documents can be obtained free of charge from the sources indicated above.
Contact Information
Investors
Wesley H. Kaupinen
Founder and CEO, Palvella Therapeutics
wes.kaupinen@palvellatx.com
Media
Stephanie Jacobson
Managing Director, Argot Partners
palvella@argotpartners.com
DULUTH — The Duluth Homegrown Music Festival is seeking both new operational leadership and a solution to financial filing issues that caused the organization to lose its federal tax-exempt status, which it has not held since 2022.
The organization is currently operating as a taxable nonprofit, confirmed Don Ness, the former Duluth mayor who serves as president of Homegrown’s
board of directors.
Ness and the board are working to discern whether there might be any outstanding tax liabilities in the wake of an apparent filing lapse.
“It’s a serious matter that requires diligence to do things right, and to correct past oversight, and to make sure that we are in full compliance with all tax and regulatory requirements,” Ness said. “The board is 100% committed to that course of action.”
As the Duluth Monitor first reported, Homegrown had its federal tax-exempt status revoked in 2022 after failing to make required financial reports for three years. The Monitor also reported that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office has notified the organization it may be in violation of state law requiring the proper registration of soliciting charities.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“All but one of us have been on for less than a year,” Ness said of the current board members. “We’ve been committed to saying, ‘hey, we need to improve the points of accountability.’”
The organization will also require new operational leadership. Co-directors Cory Jezierski and Dereck Murphy-Williams resigned earlier this month, after leading Homegrown through four successful festivals.
“My contract ended at the end of May, and I knew a few days later that I did not want to continue in that position,” Jezierski said. “Simply put, it was the best thing for my mental health. It’s a job that requires many, many hours and a lot of work, and it can be very stressful as well.”
Amy Arntson / Duluth Media Group file photo
Murphy-Williams did not respond to an interview request for this article, nor did preceding Homegrown director Melissa LaTour. According to LaTour’s
LinkedIn profile,
she was Homegrown director from 2016 to 2022.
Jason Beckman, a recent president who is no longer serving on the board, responded to a News Tribune email but did not provide an interview availability before this article went to press.
Ness does not believe the reporting lapses were due to any ill intent. He praised Jezierski and Murphy-Williams for their success managing festival operations. “They cared deeply about the festival,” he said. “It’s amazing to see that our community continues to support this really unique and special festival.”
“Those guys run a hell of a festival,” said Scott Lunt, festival founder and a current board member. “I think they needed help with bookkeeping.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
By Jezierski’s account, issues with the festival’s tax status became apparent shortly after he became co-director. “We went to file taxes, they were rejected,” Jezierski said. “At that time we, of course, didn’t know why right away, but once we started pulling on that thread, we unraveled a whole lot of the problems that were going on.”
Jezierski said “it took a long time to try to get any sort of help” from the board, but said that by the time he and Murphy-Williams left the organization, “everything had been turned over to be reconciled” with a financial professional.
Ness, like Lunt, was deeply involved with Homegrown in its first decade but had not had an official role with the festival since then. After launching the festival in 1999 and running it on his own for several years, Lunt was “burnt out,” Ness remembered.
Derek Montgomery / Duluth Media Group file photo
After a transition period during which the festival was run in partnership with the Ripsaw newspaper, Homegrown established a nonprofit organization in 2006 with Ness as festival director. Ness subsequently stepped down when he was elected mayor in 2007.
By 2025, Ness was in his current position as executive director of the Ordean Foundation.
“I was approached by a couple of longtime music scenesters,” Ness recalled. “They said, ‘There are questions about (Homegrown’s) nonprofit status. There are questions about some governance issues. We’re concerned.’”
Ness agreed to join the board, and became president. The 2026 festival ran smoothly from an operational standpoint, but Ness found the financial reporting to be lacking.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“The last board meeting that we had prior to the (co-directors’) resignations was intended to be an overview of the festival that was a month before,” Ness said. “I certainly felt very uncomfortable with how little financial information we were receiving.”
Lunt also joined the board in 2025, marking his first time serving in that capacity. He said the new board has been spending significant time addressing the accounting and reporting issues.
“Every year at Homegrown time I’m like, ‘I should get more involved,’ and then I don’t,” Lunt said. “Then this board thing came up, and it was kind of sold to me as, like, four meetings a year. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s perfect.’ And now we’re meeting weekly.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
Although it’s unclear how the organization’s finances will look when the accounting and reporting issues have been fully addressed, along with any outstanding tax liabilities, both Ness and Lunt said they are confident the annual festival will continue without interruption.
“The organization will continue,” Ness said. “The festival will continue. Homegrown is in no danger in terms of its viability.” The financial documentation Ness initially received indicated budgeted revenues of about $140,000, against about $130,000 in expenses.
“Financially, I think we’re in a great spot. We have the money to hire the (financial) professionals, and we have (done so),” Lunt said. “We were hoping that we could get all this sorted out before it had to become more public.”
“We poured countless hours into this festival, and this is how it ends, with everyone talking about this,” Jezierski said. “It’s rough.”
“There’s a DIY ethos that is really at the core of Homegrown,” reflected Ness. “We’re throwing a music festival that isn’t waiting for some famous band from the East Coast to bless us with their presence. We are doing this on our own.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
That DIY spirit also means “you’re kind of passing wisdom down from person to person, and sometimes that’s imperfect.” Ness continued. “The ways that we do things evolve over time, because it’s not a buttoned-down corporate sort of thing. That can create its own set of challenges.”
“It’s self-supporting,” said Lunt about the festival. “It’s widely volunteer-run. You do need to pay a couple people, obviously, to keep track of some things, but it’s going to be strong into the future. It’s gone through its bumps before.”
While most AI in financial services remains advisory, LUMIQ has built the layer that owns the decision — autonomous, auditable AI agents making regulated calls in production at leading banks, insurers, and capital markets firms. Today, LUMIQ serves clients across India, the United States, and Southeast Asia — leading institutions across insurance, banking, and capital markets.
NEW YORK and SINGAPORE, June 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — LUMIQ, an AI-native financial services company, today announced a strategic funding round to scale auto-decisioning for financial institutions across the United States and Southeast Asia. The round was led by Bajaj Finserv, one of India’s largest and most diversified financial services groups, with participation from existing investor Info Edge Ventures.
Right now, thousands of customers are waiting for a policy to be issued, a loan to be disbursed, a claim to be adjudicated, because somewhere an FSI employee is drowning in decisions, held back by the risk of getting it wrong. Today, when e-commerce delivers the same day, banks and insurers still decide in weeks. We built LiteCone to take that burden: AI decides the routine cases, completely and accountably, so humans spend their judgment on the one case that actually needs it. This round lets us bring that to every financial institution in the markets that matter most.
Shoaib Mohammad, Co-founder and CEO, LUMIQ
From AI that assists to AI that decides
For decades, financial institutions have bought technology that made their people faster — faster data, faster scoring, faster copilots. The decision still landed on a human. LUMIQ is changing that. Through its LiteCone platform, the company deploys AI agents that read the file, apply the institution’s own guidelines, and reach the decision end to end — escalating only the cases that genuinely require human judgment. The output is not a recommendation. It is a decision, with full reasoning attached, cross-referenced to policy, and defensible under audit.
The results in production speak clearly. At a leading life insurer, LUMIQ’s LEO agent decides 75–80% of underwriting cases with zero human touch, reduced policy issuance cost by roughly 25%, and compressed turnaround from days to under eight minutes — running 24×7 with complete auditability. Across its client base spanning insurance, banking, and capital markets in India, the US, and Southeast Asia, LUMIQ now processes millions of decisions annually.
LiteCone turns a real financial-services role into a working AI agent in weeks. Every agent we deploy is consistent, explainable, compliant, and auditable by design — not as an afterthought. This capital lets us go deeper on the platform and broader across roles. And through our cloud and AI lab partnerships, institutions will increasingly find LiteCone already embedded in the platforms they run today.
Vaibhav Dobriyal, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, LUMIQ
Consumer confidence has plunged among traditionally optimistic younger adults amid fears for their personal finances and the wider economy, figures show.
GfK’s long-running Consumer Confidence Index remained unchanged at an overall score of minus 23 in June.
However, the analyst said this was was “misleading as, beneath the surface, there are new signs that confidence is weakening”.
Neil Bellamy, consumer insights director at GfK, said: “The biggest fall this month is among those aged 16 to 29, traditionally one of the most optimistic groups.
“Here confidence has dropped 11 points over the past month to minus two, the lowest level seen for two years, driven by large falls in views on both their own personal finances and the wider economy.
“More broadly, there are now no demographic groups with a positive confidence score, including higher-income households earning £50,000 or more, who have slipped back into negative territory as of June.
“Confidence remains subdued and vulnerable to further economic or political uncertainty.”
Overall, confidence in personal finances over the coming year remained flat at minus two, four points lower than this time last year.
The measures of both personal finances and the economy over the previous 12 months were both slightly down, by two points and three points respectively, “reflecting the sense that things have been extremely tough over the last year for so many”, GfK said.
The only measure to increase was expectations for the wider economy over the next 12 months, up two points to minus 36 but still eight points below this time last year.
The major purchase index, an indicator of confidence in buying big ticket items, remained at minus 20, four points lower than June last year.
-
Illinois6 minutes agoIllinois has already broken the record for number of tornadoes in a year — and it’s only June
-
Indiana8 minutes agoHamilton County teen is youngest delegate at Indiana Republican convention
-
Iowa14 minutes agoReynolds orders flags lowered for funeral of Iowa Sen. Julian Garrett
-
Kentucky24 minutes ago
Louisville celebrates Juneteenth with parade honoring history and culture
-
Louisiana29 minutes agoFrom ‘not pageant people’ to Miss Louisiana stage: Addison J…
-
Maine36 minutes agoMaine gubernatorial candidates trade barbs on first day of general campaign
-
Maryland39 minutes agoMaryland governor celebrates Juneteenth in historically-Black Montgomery County community – WTOP News
-
Michigan44 minutes agoWest Michigan celebrates Juneteenth
