Gunnar Weikert is the founder and executive chairman of Switzerland-based consumer goods company Nestlé’s corporate venturing unit, Inventages, which has $1.5bn under management. He was previously global head for life sciences deals at Germany-based healthcare company Bayer.
At Bayer, he oversaw venture investments and collaborations “representing some of the biggest deals between big pharma and biotechnology in the late 1990s”, according to his biography on Inventages’ website. These deals included partnerships with companies such as Millennium and Lion Bioscience. Weikert has a PhD in metabolism from University of Düsseldorf, and an MBA.