For 12 years we’ve helped fire the starting gun on the busiest week in the Europe healthcare calendar at our Annual Conference, with debate, discussion and high-quality networking.
Every conference is important to us but this, our 12th, was special, as our first under the ICR Healthcare brand, a year after being acquired by ICR, and what a great way to kick off life under the new brand. It was standing room only in a packed conference hall in Moorgate, London, on November 18th, as healthcare’s finest rubbed shoulders with friends in corporate finance, academia, media and advisers with a packed agenda of sessions and the usual networking drinks.
This year’s theme was Development, Deals and Dollars, and Panel 1: What do your future partners really want? was a veritable Who’s Who of large pharma business development: (see list).
Business development specialists come at the question of “What pharma wants?” from a variety of angles, each influenced by the culture and values of the parent company and the breadth of response was revealing. Some panelists put more store on the importance of cultural fit and team chemistry, others suggested that its ultimately about the deal and the rest is noise. But everyone agreed on a few fundamentals: part of their job was to filter out non-starter ideas before they get to the c suite, it’s important to start building relationships as early as you can. And, as AstraZeneca’s Shaun Grady put it, it’s all about the science: “You’ve got to get scientists talking to scientists. Then the sparks fly.”
Panel 2: What Investors Want: the key criteria investors really care about when making investment decisions was, as always, one of the most hotly debated sections of the event.
All the participants agreed that the landscape is volatile due to the uncertainties of the incoming Trump administration and, in particular, anxiety about what the nominee for Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy, may have planned for the sector. But the consensus is that the highest quality companies will always attract investment, regardless of the macro environment.
“I lived through the covid pandemic and we saw the markets drop significantly, the best quality companies were those that failed the least, and everyone wanted to buy biotech again,” said Candriam’s Linden Thomson. Meanwhile, there is lots to be excited about in Europe. As Sofinnova’s Maina Bhaman pointed out, despite the well-documented challenges of the public markets in some major European capitals, the venture capital sector is thriving, with a fair political wind. F-Prime’s Alex Pasteur added that Europe’s emphasis on preventative healthcare is a strength to be leveraged. “Europe arguably has some features around preventive healthcare, geographic variations that it should and could make more of,” he said. The panel discussed their current areas of therapeutic focus, with shouts for cardiovascular, inflammation and immunology and radiopharma.
The Fireside Chat featured a frank and wide-ranging discussion between Recordati CEO Rob Koremans and Reynald Castaneda, Deputy Editor at Endpoints News. Koremans. Rob talked about the opportunity and challenge of helping a respected family business evolve into a global pharma.
Part of Recordati’s success is that it deftly manages its legacy, cash generative Specialty and Primary Care business alongside a fast-growing rare disease business. Koremans is convinced that serving a genuine unmet medical need – as Recordati does with its rare disease products – always offers opportunities for value creation. Recordati has deep relationships with physicians, developed over decades, which supports both parts of the business and gives Koremans the confidence to talk about a fast growth trajectory for this part of the business alongside the Specialty and Primary Care business.
We finished this year’s conference with a bit of fun and a game show: What if…? A live company survival scenario where the audience becomes the decision maker. This was the closest the ICR Healthcare Conference gets to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, with the moderator presenting a set of real-life scenarios facing a healthcare company and having the audience act as the Board of Directors, guided by the panel as the management team, voting on the ultimate outcome.
As another conference season concluded in London, the passion and commitment of entrepreneurs and investors in healthcare is as intense as ever and, with our global partners, we look forward to 2025 with optimism.
