Rewarding Summer for Novateur and Its Clients and Portfolio Investment Companies

It has been a rewarding summer for Novateur and its clients and portfolio investment companies!

Despite the heat and the vacation season, this summer has seen a flurry of notable activities across the Life Sciences.

We are excited to announce new Novateur services as well as to celebrate the success of Novateur clients and our investment portfolio companies in closing deals, partnerships, and investments.

Congratulations to IRICoR, Feldan Therapeutics, Navigo Proteins, MetaOptima, Vasomune, Immune BioSolutions and AIT Therapeutics.

In Industry Review, we discuss a confluence of positive events that have created a perfect storm and the reasons why we encourage our clients to close partnerships and financings as quickly as possible.

Confluence of positive events (outlined below) has created a perfect storm currently for our sector:

1. Most active IPO market, as highlighted here by Renaissance Capital
2. Large pharma’s healthy cash position due to Trump’s repatriation tax plan
3. An industry friendly regulatory regime in the US, showcased by a record number of new drug approvals by the FDA
4. A string of good news on a number of large (and often difficult) trials for both pharma and biotech, including successful Alzheimer trial by Biogen and positive Phase 3 trials by Pfizer/Lilly in pain.

More than ever, it’s prudent for companies to get deals done or close financing quickly prior to the window closing.

Two immediate concerns around the global markets heading to 2019:

1. Upcoming mid-term elections in November and possible loss of the House by Republicans to Democrats may cause turmoil. This switch will likely strengthen the Russian collusion investigations and findings may impact financial markets.
2. New US sanctions on Iran (scheduled to take effect in November) and potential removal of about 2 million barrels of oil from the markets may also impact the stock market. These sanctions also may increase a chance of a new war in the Middle East.

We see storms gathering and ask everyone to complete financial transactions and partnerships while they can.

I am reminded of a CEO who had $25 M term-sheet on September 10, 2001 and refused to sign it due to a minor language disagreement on the funding term-sheet and of course we know what happened the next day.