Anja König has been promoted to global head of Novartis Venture Fund (NVF), the corporate venturing unit of Switzerland-based pharmaceutical company Novartis, following the retirement of Reinhard Ambros.
Ambros had spent the 12 years as global head of NVF and was part of 2017’s GCV Powerlist. König had, as managing director of NVF, been named as part of Global Corporate Venturing’s Rising Stars list for 2017.
A graduate of Oxford, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Cornell, König was an associate partner at management consultancy firm McKinsey for six years from 2000, where she worked with healthcare, pharmaceutical and biotech firms on both sides of the Atlantic, before joining NVF in 2006.
König‘s current portfolio features biotech Bicycle Therapeutics, which raised $32m in a 2014 round that included corporate venturing peer SR One; UK-based anti-fungal drug developer F2G, which received $60m in June 2016; and Forendo Pharma, which secured $12.8m in 2014.
König has also overseen several successful exits for Novartis, including Heptares Therapeutics, which was acquired by Sosei for up to $400m in 2015, and Covagen, a life science firm targeting cancer and inflammatory diseases.
Novartis had supported Covagen since its 2009 seed round and led its $50m series B, before the company was bought by Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Cilag for an unspecified sum in 2014.
König has also had two flotations. Qurient Therapeutics listed on Korea’s Kosdaq stock exchange in a KrW32.5bn ($26m) initial public offering in February 2016 after spinning out from Institut Pasteur Korea, a research institute focused on curing infectious diseases, in 2008.
König also worked with biotech Nabriva Therapeutics, which received $44.7m in a 2006 series A round and a further $120m in its 2015 series B, ahead of its IPO later in the year.
– Photo of Anja König courtesy of LinkedIn