US-based financial services firm Burrill & Co LLC said yesterday it was inclined to invest in companies that can develop new drugs and manufacture consumer healthcare products related to digital electronics.
“We are especially interested in companies with market access to China,” Burrill & Co managing director Marietta Wu (巫薈) told a press conference after the opening of the annual BioBusiness Asia investment forum in Taipei.
Eyeing the strong research capability in genomics in Taiwanese hospitals and research centers, Wu said her company plans to help bolster Taiwan’s research into diseases commonly seen among Asians, such as diabetes.
Photo: CNA, courtesy of the Industrial Technology Research Institute
Burrill & Co, which manages US$1.5 billion in investment funds, has injected US$7 million in drug maker Taiwan Liposome Co (TLC, 台灣微脂體) and US$10 million in JHL Biotech Inc (喜康生技).
Japan-based DCI Partners Co, YFY Biotech Management Co (上騰生技顧問) and the CID Group (華威國際創投) are also at the forum to look for investment opportunities.
“Over the past several years, Taiwan’s biotech industry has mainly been involved in preliminary research and development,” said Richard Shau (邵耀華), general director of Industrial Technology Research Institute’s (ITRI, 工研院) biomedical technology and device research laboratories.
“But now, products developed by a number of local biotech companies have passed phase two or phase three clinical trials, making them look more attractive to international venture capitalists,” Shau said at the forum’s opening ceremony.
A US-based consulting firm told the forum that Asia will lead sales growth in the global pharmaceutical industry between 2010 and 2015 because of its strong macroeconomic growth.
Andy Liu (劉安庭), president of Asia Pacific and China at IMS Health Inc, the world’s largest provider of market data to the pharmaceutical industry, said the global pharmaceutical market is expected to grow by about 5 percent, or US$250 billion, during the five-year period.
Asia, excluding Japan, will account for 31 percent of the US$250 billion sales growth, higher than an estimated 19 percent share for Latin America, 10 percent for North America, 10 percent for Europe and 8 percent for Japan, Liu said during his keynote speech.
The strong growth in Asia will largely come from the region’s continued growth in GDP, increasing healthcare spending and growing urban population, Liu said.
However, with all this growth in Asia, international venture capitalists should be aware that local players usually dominate in emerging markets, while multinational companies have a stronger presence in developed markets, he said.
In the first quarter of the year, for example, multinational companies accounted for 70 percent of the US$4.3 billion pharmaceutical market in Taiwan, which is classified by IMS Health as a mature market because its health insurance covers more than 99 percent of the population, Liu said.
In contrast, local players hold a 76 percent share of China’s US$51.6 billion pharmaceutical market, which is still seen as an emerging market because of the country’s lagging healthcare coverage, he said.
China is poised to overtake Japan as the world’s second-largest pharmaceutical market behind the US in 2016, jumping from ninth place in 2005 and third in 2010, according to IMS Health estimates.
The BioBusiness Asia is a four-day event that runs through Sunday. The two-day investment forum is being held at the Grant Hyatt Taipei, while more conferences, exhibitions and matchmaking activities are being held at the Taipei World Trade Center Nangang Exhibition Hall.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day