Agenda

Current public markets and the regulatory environment are challenging for late stage private and early stage public biotech companies. Biotech investors require an exit strategy as an essential part of the company’s business plan. Initial public offerings (IPO's) are not creating exits for private investors so mergers and acquisitions (M&A's) are becoming the preferred exit strategy for early stage investors. This shift to M&A as a dominant exit strategy and the need of big pharma to bolster their pipelines makes it difficult for companies to hold on to their products. Highly visible drug safety issues have Congress challenging the FDA to do more to protect patients. Join a lively panel discussion with industry leading investment bankers to look at the current industry and market dynamics and the strategies biotechnology companies are using to weather this perfect storm; challenging regulatory environment, turbulent markets, big pharma is shopping and maturation of the industry.

• J. Donald deBethizy, Ph.D., President and CEO, Targacept
• Maarten de Jong, Managing Director, Lehman Brothers Global Healthcare Group
• Jennifer Fox, Managing Director, Investment Banking Healthcare, Deutsche Bank
• Simon Gill, Managing Director and Co-head of U.S. Healthcare Investment Banking, RBC Capital Markets

Traditionally, the early stages of biotechnology innovation have been funded through sweat equity, government grants, venture capital, licensing revenues and the public markets. This model is built on the assumption that later stages of development will be funded by large partners or by the public capital markets. But the public markets generally, and the IPO market in particular, has been lukewarm for biotech companies, putting downward pressure on the valuation of private companies and smaller cap public companies even while Big Pharma has been paying top dollar to acquire promising companies and programs. Many companies respond to these market dynamics by selling the company, rather than accepting additional dilution and clinical stage risk.

Others are turning to new sources of capital to help finance research and development programs. Some of these investors are affiliated with existing pharma or biotech companies, and seek to leverage the development and financial resources of the parent to help grow portfolio companies to help fill the pipeline of the parent. Others bring project finance deal structures or other resources to help finance clinical development programs. Either way, clinical stage companies will want to explore the merits of non-traditional sources of capital.

• Michael P. Arlotto, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Emerging Biotech, NovaQuest
• Wing Delatorre, M.D., M.B.A., Director, New Ventures, Biogen Idec
• David Pierson, Partner, Intersouth Partners
• Richard Soltero, Ph.D., President, PharmaDirections
• Alastair J.J. Wood, M.D., Managing Director, Symphony Capital