Business Roundtable
Beyond Classic M&A
Thursday, October 30, 2008
5:00pm - 6:15pm
Presidio
A diversity of deal structures have emerged in 2008. The company leading the deal is not necessarily the larger entity; the core asset could be a CEO; and the impetus may be a motivated shareholder, or a VC with an asset and capital looking in from the outside. This panel will discuss a range of business combinations -- including traditional big pharma with biotech; private with private; public with private; reverse mergers; spin-outs and carve outs.
Moderator
- Hany S. Awadalla, Managing Director, Healthcare Investment Banking, Collins Stewart
Panelists
- Farah Champsi, Managing Director, Alta Partners
- Jeremy Springhorn, PhD, Head of Global Business Development and Corporate Strategy, Alexion Pharmaceuticals
- Lori Rafield, PhD, Director, VaxGen, Inc.
- John Dunn, Executive Vice President, New Ventures, Biogen Idec
Who's Who
Hany S. Awadalla Mr. Awadalla founded and developed Wells Fargo Securities' life sciences team, which handled corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions and private capital. In addition, he oversaw the firm's successful life sciences conferences. He brought a number of clients—including Arthrocare, Rita Medical, Insmed, InVivo and Cubist - to Wells Fargo Securities from Robertson Stephens, where he was a managing director and head of life sciences mergers and acquisitions from 1997 to 2002. He had held the same position at UBS. He was previously at Merrill Lynch & Co. and L.F. Rothschild, Unterberg, Towbin. He holds a BA from Columbia University and an MBA and an MA from The Wharton School.
Farah Champsi Ms. Champsi joined Alta in 2000, prior to the formation of Alta BioPharma II. She is currently on the board of directors of Aerovance, Excaliard Pharmaceuticals, Myocor, Portola Pharmaceuticals, Sanarus Medical, and Trevena, and serves as the Chairperson of the Board for Zelos Therapeutics. She also led Alta’s investment in Agensys. Prior investments include Cytokinetics, Esperion, Orphan Medical and Renovis. She focuses her efforts on biopharmaceutical and medical technology companies. Prior to Alta, Ms. Champsi was an investment banker at Robertson Stephens & Company between 1987 and 1999, where she focused on biotechnology and other life sciences companies. She was elected a General Partner in 1992 and head of the global life sciences investment banking group in 1995. During that time, she was responsible for building one of the most successful life sciences investment banking franchises on Wall Street. She holds a Master of Business Administration from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Smith College.
Lori Rafield, PhD Dr. Rafield is currently a consultant to both the biotechnology and device industries working with entrepreneurs to create and finance companies with both institutional and strategic partners. Recently, she guided Pearl Therapeutics in raising $15MM to support their development of respiratory products based upon a spin out of technology from Nektar. In addition, she advised AstraZeneca in the divestiture of several of their GI assets which received venture capital support as part of establishing an independent company. Previously, from 1998 to 2005, Dr. Rafield was Managing Director at Apax Partners (formerly Patricof & Co. Ventures), where she was the head of healthcare and responsible for developing a diversified healthcare investment strategy for a $250MM healthcare portfolio within a $1 billion fund. While at Apax, she was predominantly focused on the creation of therapeutic product companies from pharmaceutical assets and resources which led to investments in Zymogenetics (Novo Nordisk), Affymax (GSK) and Aerovance (Bayer). Prior to that, from 1995 to 1997, she was an investment Principal at Robertson Stephens Early Stage Venture Fund and an Affiliate at Institutional Venture Partners from 1991 to 1995. Dr. Rafield held scientific research and management positions at Somatix Therapy Corp. from 1989 to 1991 and at Integrated Genetics, Inc. from 1986 to 1989 where she directed molecular biology efforts in the development and expression of recombinant proteins. She received a Ph.D. in 1981 in microbiology at University of Virginia Medical School, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School.
Jeremy P. Springhorn, PhD Dr. Springhorn is currently Head of Global Business Development for Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. He comes to this position after 14 years of service to Alexion within the Research Group. He has broad experience in the discovery and development of antibody based drugs, cumulating in the recent approval of Soliris® (Eculizumab). During the past 8 years Jeremy has led the Business Development activities for Alexion. Jeremy received his BA degree in Chemistry and Biochemistry from Colby College and received his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from LSUMC in New Orleans. Prior to Alexion, he worked for three years at Harvard Medical School as a Fellow/Instructor.
John Dunn Mr. Dunn is an Executive Vice President of Biogen Idec and heads the company's internal corporate venture group. Biogen Idec New Ventures was formed to make equity investments in emerging biotech companies developing products and technologies of strategic interest to Biogen Idec. The corporate allocation to this initiative is now $200 million. Mr. Dunn was previously Senior Vice President and General Counsel of IDEC Pharmaceuticals. He led IDEC’s legal department and served as a member of the company’s senior management team. Prior to joining IDEC, Mr. Dunn had been a partner with Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP and co-leader of the firm’s Biotech, Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare Industry Team.