Munich Transactions Roundup: Defying the Credit Crunch!

Looking back over 2008, it’s hard not to feel gloomy with all the news of trouble on the financial markets, credit crunch and economic downturn. Yet for clients of College Hill’s Life Sciences Munich office, last year was marked by a string of eye-catching transactions that appeared to buck the trend.

The year started well with Heidelberg-based Affimed, a company specialised in developing antibodies to treat cancer, announcing the second closing of its Series B to the tune of €30M. mtm laboratories, another Heidelberg company and the developer of biomarker-based diagnostic tests for cervical cancer, also announced a €9.6 M second closing of its series C financing in April to take it to a total of €31.6M. The Munich team helped both these companies with their business plans and supported them with PR during their financing rounds so both of these were very pleasing outcomes.

Munich-based U3 Pharma, a developer of targeted cancer therapeutics, was acquired for €150 million by the Japanese pharmaceutical company Daiichi Sankyo Co. Ltd. In September, Cologne based Direvo sold its biopharmaceutical business to Bayer Healthcare for a cool €210M. Mainz-based Ganymed Pharmaceuticals, a company developing antibodies for solid cancers, was first acquired by ATS Beteiligungsverwaltung GmbH in August and then announced a €65M financing round in November.

And nor was it just the well established companies announcing these successes: In September our early stage Swiss client Telormedix, a developer of novel immunotherapeutic molecules, announced a Series A financing of CHF 21M (€13.1M).

Let’s just hope the success keeps coming in 2009!

December 2008

To discuss our capability in this area please contact:
Dr Douglas Pretsell, Senior Account Director
+49 (0)89 5700 1806
douglas.pretsell[at]collegehill.com

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