Article preview from Start-Up - January, 2012
Investors like Imperial Innovations and Jumpstart are stepping up to fill the gap in Series A investing.
Article preview from Start-Up - January, 2012
On the list of biopharma Series A rounds of 2011, few investors appeared more often than Imperial Innovations Group PLC or played as outsized a role in a specific sector. Indeed, European early-stage biotech might have done far worse in what became an annus horribilis for the Continent and the United Kingdom were it not for Imperial. But the hybrid, publicly traded firm – part tech transfer office of Imperial College London, part incubator, part evergreen investment fund – set itself to the task in December 2010, raising £140 million ($220 million) in new commitments from its owners to put aggressively toward new companies around health care, engineering and clean energy technology either spun out of or associated with not just Imperial College, but also three other top English academic centers. (The firm is now 30% owned by Imperial College London and most of the rest is owned by Invesco Private Capitaland Landsdowne Partners.)
With that broad remit, it's startling to see Imperial take part in three Series A life science fundraisings in 2011 – Mission Therapeutics Ltd., Autifony Therapeutics Ltd., and TopiVert Ltd. – plus a fourth at the very end of 2010, PsiOxus Therapeutics Ltd. It led or co-led three of the four deals, and it's changed strategy to stay involved in some of its companies longer until they hit a "proof point," says director of health care investments Maina Bhaman.
When Imperial announced the new funds a year ago, CEO Susan Searle predicted in this magazine it would boost its investment rate to £60 million a year across all its sectors in three or four years' time. According to Elsevier's Strategic Transactions, Imperial's Series A life-science commitments alone in 2011 came to somewhere between £10 and £14 million. Add later-round investments in Circassia Holdings Ltd. (£15 million commitment), PolyTherics Ltd. (£1.2 million), Veryan Medical Ltd. (£2.5 million), and it's an ambitious one-year showing. It also helped launch two companies on the high-tech side.
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