Newly Launched Eir Ventures To Target ‘Early Nordic Opportunities

BY STEN STOVALL

Executive Summary

The Nordic region’s vibrant life sciences ecosystem will be the chief focus for newly created Eir Ventures, a strategic partnership and investment company.

Nordic investment fund Eir Ventures has just launched, armed with €76m ($85m) that mangers say will be invested in innovative life science companies in the region to advance cutting-edge therapies and technologies there that might otherwise not get the attention they deserve.

The new Nordic life science venture fund was officially created this month with the support from an investor syndicate comprising Saminvest, the European Investment Fund (EIF), Vækstfonden, Novo Holdings, as well as additional private investors.

“We expect to invest around two thirds of the fund’s money in the Nordic region, with the remainder going to prospects in the US and EU,” said Stephan Christgau, a managing partner at Eir Ventures. The plan is to gradually expand the fund’s investment fire power to €100m ($112m) via future closing rounds.

Eir Ventures has been set up by an experienced and successful team of life science investors and has offices in Sweden’s capital Stockholm and the Danish capital Copenhagen.

Headquartered in Sweden, Eir Ventures will be particularly interested in innovations from the Nordic region’s leading universities and incubators.

Christgau, a Dane, told Scrip that the Nordic region – comprising the three Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Sweden, Norway as well as Finland and Iceland – is regularly ranked as one of the most innovative areas in Europe, supported by a stable business environment and an envious track record of medical innovation and world-class life science expertise.

“But the region is severely underserved with professional venture capital. Eir Ventures sees this as a unique opportunity that it will leverage,” said Christgau, who joined Eir Ventures after 12 years at Novo Holdings where he helped to establish company creator Novo Seeds.

“The basic premise for this fund is this imbalance between an abundance of investment opportunities and the lack of specialized life sciences capital in the region,” he added.

Aside from just-launched Eir Ventures, there are only five other specialized life sciences investors in the Nordic region: HealthCap Sweden, Hadean Ventures, Copenhagen-based Sunstone Life Science Ventures, as well as Novo Holdings and Lundbeckfond Ventures.

The new fund would invest in a range of prospects. These would include ‘seedling’ early-stage start ups. “But the majority of the investment would follow a general venture capital approach of backing groups having at least a proof of principle with an exit horizon in Phase II, but we’d also have an appetite in areas where you can go earlier because there is a Phase I exit opportunity, especially in the CNS area where you see good opportunities with early stage assets,” explained Andreas Segerros, a Swede, who is also a managing partner of the newly created financing entity.

Eir Ventures will be agnostic when it comes to therapeutic areas. “That said, you need to understand the trends on the buyers’ side. Also, while oncology is an extremely hot area, it is also overcrowded,” Segerros said. He said the Nordic region consistently displayed strengths in varied scientific modalities.

Eir Ventures views Finland as ‘a hidden gem’ of health data, with a 100% population penetration of electronic health records. Norway is emerging as a life science nation producing world-leading research in oncology, among other things.

“Denmark meanwhile thrives by having a big pharmaceutical industry sector. Sweden, where I am from, lack one after losing both Pharmacia and AstraZeneca. But there are clusters that can be leveraged within the two countries, with southern Sweden and the greater Copenhagen area being one big cluster,” Segerros said.

Regional synergies in the life sciences sector could be boosted with the joined-up approach that Eir Ventures hopes to promote through its investment approach.

“There is a movement underway in the region to take a more collaborative approach and we hope that Eir Ventures, by having partners from both countries, we can help to finally bridge the gap between the two countries and overcome nationalistic barriers that have so far helped to block such approaches,” Segerros said.

He added: “As a regional investor we will have a responsibility to thoroughly search for rough diamonds that might not otherwise have their value realized.”

Danish counterpart Christgau echoed that message, saying, “Eir Ventures are the first life sciences fund to have offices both in Copenhagen and Stockholm. That sounds simple, but it goes to the heart of the matter. No other fund has done that.

“We have a conscious goal of linking the Nordic region, despite the fact it comprises separate countries and separate ways of doing many things. We have a very credible shot at being a truly Nordic investor,” he concluded.