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Sir Christopher Evans launches new investment house

Written by News Desk

Thursday, 10 April 2008

One of the founding fathers of the Cambridge biotech cluster, Sir Christopher Evans has announced the launch of a new international investment house. Excalibur - a merger of the operations of Evans' Merlin Biosciences team and  Merchant Ventures, a financial services group specialising in venture capital, private equity and structured finance - says it expects to start fundraising this year. The brains behind some of Cambridge’s leading bio success stories, like Celltech and Celsis, Sir Chris has also invested in a number of local start-ups through his Merlin vehicle. Having made his name in biotech, Sir Chris is now widening his outlook with the new company's investment strategy to encompass the "entire medical sciences sector."   A statement from the company said that the new venture would build on the successful investment strategy of Merlin’s Fund III which has focused more broadly on healthcare and medical science investments, a move that is "already delivering significant returns to investors with five more years to run."   Key investors and stakeholders in Excalibur besides Sir Chris include Sir Tom Hunter’s West Coast Capital, Professor Jeremy Stone, chairman of Merchant Ventures, and Lloyds TSB. The move marks an auspicious return to the headlines for Sir Christopher, having been dogged by controversy in recent years - both in the form of a Serious Fraud Office probe and as a central figure ion the cash for honours row.   Excalibur has recently acquired the whole team and profitable business activities of Merchant Ventures, a VC and private equity specialist. All of the Directors of the original Merlin and Merchant businesses have been retained and moved across to Excalibur.   Excalibur will target aesthetics, diagnostics, medical devices, speciality pharmaceuticals, surgical equipment, healthcare services, medical supply chain, wellness and laboratory and hospital supplies.   The venture will operate primarily in the UK and Europe identifying lower risk, high reward medical investment prospects but will also explore opportunities in Asia, Australia, and the Middle East.   Sir Christopher said: “Excalibur is an exciting evolution of the original Merlin concept and we have created a group of 19 professionals with considerable commercial, financial and technical experience. The acquisition of Merchant Ventures has significantly enhanced our skill base and investment expertise whilst also contributing to our profit base.  I am personally delighted to welcome Jeremy Barnes, our CEO, and Jeremy Stone, our Deputy Chairman, to Excalibur.   “The medical sciences sector is large and its broad range of opportunities enables us to focus on a variety of financing strategies for young, high growth medical companies. Investment into the overall sector is an attractive prospect for investors and we will continue to focus on taking larger equity stakes and delivering good returns for investors in relatively short time frames. We will be striving in our usual hands-on manner to ensure investee companies realise their full potential quickly in terms of value creation and profitability.      “Our 20 years of bioscience experience has helped us evolve this current Excalibur model to deliver better results and sooner. Biotechnology will always be an exciting and revolutionary industry and will continue to be a significant segment of the medical sciences sector. However, Merlin’s Fund III is successful because it has focused on the broader medical science arena and not just bioscience.  We are building on that success and experience with the creation of Excalibur.”   Jeremy Barnes, Excalibur’s CEO, said: “Excalibur will be working primarily with medical businesses that have to some degree already proven their commercial value.   “For investee companies, access to capital and experienced commercial practitioners is the key to their growth. We provide access to a unique selection of financial products and services including venture and development capital, private equity, corporate and structured finance.”   “We’re confident that an injection of quality advice and specialist financial support at just the right point will help investees grow into profitable medical businesses. And of course this means more robust, lower-risk returns for Excalibur’s investors.”   Merlin Biosciences was founded in 1996 and operated three funds totalling 450 million euro. Funds 1 and II largely delivered seed capital for start up bioscience companies. Set as favorite Bookmark Email This Hits: 778 Trackback(0) TrackBack URI for this entry Comments (0) Subscribe to this comment's feed Write comment This content has been locked. You can no longer post any comment.

 

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