Germany-based drugs group Merck has doubled its commitment to its corporate venturing unit to €300m ($340m) as part of a broader role for the team headed by Roel Bulthuis.
Renamed Merck Ventures from Merck Serono (MS) Ventures, Bulthuis, a GCV Powerlist 2016 awardee, now manages 14 people in four investment teams covering healthcare, life science, performance materials and new businesses. (Germany-based Merck is independent of US-peer Merck.)
Each team has the capacity to engage in seed-stage company creation, early-stage syndicated investments and Merck spin-off creation and funding. Bulthuis’ team has doubled in size over the past year from seven, including new hires, such as Bram Vanparys, former senior investment manager in life sciences for state-backed PMV, and Laura Braeuninger-Weimer, head of venture operations.
Bulthuis set up what was then known as MS Ventures in 2009 and built the €150m evergreen strategic venture fund into one of the leading early stage investors in the healthcare field, with a Bioaccelerator Fund in Israel and a €30m Entrepreneur Partnership Program to fund spinouts from the parent company.
This original biopharma fund was at the basis of Galecto Biotech (galectin modulators for the treatment of severe diseases), Asceneuron (Merck spin-off developing innovative drugs to help people with Alzheimer’s disease) and Metabomed (novel drugs against targets in the field of cancer cell metabolism), among others.
Stefan Oschmann, chairman of the executive board and CEO of Merck, said: “Our biopharma venture fund has been very successful to date. However, Merck is more than biopharma, which is why we have decided to augment the successful biopharma fund to create a model which fits the structure of Merck as a leading science and technology company.
“The new fund reflects our three business sectors and, with its fourth arm, is also open to invest in new businesses as we scout continuously for innovative ideas, for example in the area of digitalization.”
Bulthuis, now managing director of Merck Ventures and with a direct reporting line to Oschmann, who took over from Karl-Ludwig Kley in April, added: “The investments of Merck Ventures will be aligned with the strategic interests of Merck, though formally separated by a Chinese wall.
“With our infrastructure of a leading science and technology company we provide startups with the support they need to make their vision a commercial success.”