Our ongoing mission at Biotech and Money is to forge a fundamentally better way to promote and facilitate investment, financing, partnerships and deal making in healthcare. One of the key ways we do that is by talking to and, more importantly, listening to our community. A topic that seemed to we’ve found to be of almost universal interest to companies of all sizes in our network is in engaging more with family offices, who are notoriously, but understandably, quiet and choose to y under the radar. However, we’ve also been sensing a growing interest in the healthcare sector as an investment opportunity from FOs.Whilst any investment is based upon making a good return, there seems to be a natural synergy between healthcare investment and family offices, with families potentially working with longer investment horizons, with a philanthropic element to their investment strategy, or with personal or family experience of certain illnesses and diseases, and wanting to make a difference in finding treatments and cures.
On July 14, 2016 we spoke exclusively to a panel of family office experts, for the next in our Biotech and Money webinar series. The principle objective of the panel was to understand more about the role of family office investment in life sciences, the best ways to connect and develop relationships with the family office community, and uncover some advice, insight and expertise for biotechs about working with family offices, and for family office executives about getting involved in the sector.
During the live webinar, the audience were asked to vote on what they felt was the biggest barrier to greater investment from family offices into healthcare. A large majority of 70% felt that access, the ability for companies to connect and meet with FOs, was the greatest barrier, with a further 17% feeling that volume, the number of FOs who understand and are interested in the sector, was the major issue.
With such an overwhelming majority of 87% suggesting that connecting with family offices, and introducing them to the sector and educating them on the investment opportunities was the biggest barrier, we felt that we were very well positioned to help work to overcome some of these barriers through a healthcare roundtable focused exclusively for family offices.
With one of our panelists for the webinar acting as both a SFO representative and Deputy Chairman to the Family Office Council, the idea to combine our respective networks was discussed and developed, culminating in the ‘Family Office Healthcare Forum’. The concept was to bring a group of SFOs interested in the healthcare sector together with a select group of life science corporates, who worked across some of the most exciting sub-sectors, and who were interested in connecting with family offices but also playing their part in educating and driving forward engagement with this type of investor in the industry.
We already had plans to run our inaugural Biotech and Money Inv€$tival Showcase, in exclusive partnership with Jefferies LLC and their annual Healthcare Conference on November 18. The Inv€$tival Showcase was designed to bring together 50 life sciences companies to pitch and connect with over 100 investors of all types in life sciences. Combining the two seemed a natural fit, and we were delighted to host the inaugural Family Office Healthcare Forum on the same date.
The discussions in the forum were under Chatham House Rule, however we know both our community and that of the Family Office Council would be interested in some of the discussions and findings that came out of the meeting. This report will provide some of those insights and I hope you find it a valuable resource.
Want to know more about the role of SFOs in the healthcare sector?
Download our Family Office Healthcare Forum report
Add Your Response