On the hottest day on record for over 165 years, 30 CEOs and CFOs from many of the UK’s leading listed life science and healthcare companies made the journey to Westminster, One Great George Street. Their reason, to attend the first of what will become an international series of events called HealthEx CEO/CFO Forum, an event run by Biotech and Money.

The event creates a genuine peer-to-peer environment for executives to debate the strategies for investor engagement; problem solve challenges around capital and come together to share ideas on how to promote and cultivate a strong and vibrant environment for life science investment. The forum also offered up opportunities for several pre-IPO companies to join the debate.

The forum, sponsored by EY and Nasdaq, and supported by investment bank Jefferies, ran for a full day and combined keynote presentations with intimate discussion groups.

View the Forum Photos here using the password biotech to access.

David MacMurchy, Partner, Consumer Products, Retail and Life Science Leader and Head of Life Sciences, EY kicked things off by providing an exclusive look at their newly released ‘Biotechnology Industry Report 2015 - Beyond Borders Reaching new heights’.

This was followed by Gil Bar-Nahum, Managing Director, Global Healthcare Investment Banking, Jefferies & Co. who provided the Capital Market perspectives, addressing the imbalance between the UK and US.

The keynote session was wrapped up by Nelson Griggs, EVP, Listing Services, Nasdaq who followed on from Gil’s talk with an overview of the continuing evolution of tapping public markets.

From morning coffee onwards, the discussion groups took over, allowing executives to hold 90min peer-to-peer discussion group on themes that included strategies on fundraising and raising capital, how and where will you grow?, investor engagement, education and communication and how to improve investor appetite for the sector.

CEOs and CFOs in attendance included:

Peter George, CEO, Clinigen, Justin Gover, CEO, GW Pharmaceuticals, Jim Phillips, CEO, Midatech Pharma, Richard Goodfellow, CEO, Scancell, Jan-Anders Karlsson, CEO, Verona Pharma, Biresh Roy, CFO, Verona Pharma, John Dawson, CEO, Oxford Biomedica, Chris Hill, CFO, Oxford Pharmascience, Andrew Derodra, CFO, Skyepharma, Richard Vellacott, CFO, Horizon Discovery, Tim Watts, CFO, Oxford Biomedica, Neil Clark, CFO, Ergomed, John Dawson, CEO, Alliance Pharma, Stephen Franklin, CEO, Evgen Pharma, Neil Murray, CEO, Redx Pharma, Phil Tottey, CFO, Redx Pharma, Dimitri F. Dimitriou, CEO, ImmuPharma, Andrew Oakley, CFO, Vectura, Simon Kerry, CEO, Karus Therapeutics, Tim Mitchell, CEO, Sareum, Timothy Freeborn, CFO, Silence Therapeutics, Anker Lundemose, CEO Mission Therapeutics, Ajan Reginald, CEO, Cell Therapy Ltd., John Haurum, CEO, F-star, Tolga Hassan, CFO, F-star, Chris Meredith, CEO, Advanced Medical Solutions Group plc., Wolfgang Rencken, CEO, Sphere Medical Limited, John Beadle, CEO, PsiOxus Therapeutics, Charles Weston, CFO, Genomics plc.

We were delighted to welcome all participants to the forum and we look forward to welcoming these and many more to future editions of the forum.

The next HealthEx London Forum will be held on the 2nd February 2016, in conjunction with our flagship investment and partnering congress Biotech and Money 2016 from 2-3 February 2016.

The next international HealthEx Forums will be held in Stockholm, Sweden on 20th October; HealthEx Nordic and in New York City on 17th November, in collaboration with Biotech and Money New York 2015.