News | Corporate Finance

Thursday 5th July 2001

SJ Berwin acted for a syndicate of some of the most respected investors in the global lifescience arena on its equity investment into Inpharmatica Limited, one of the largest ever rounds of private investment in the life sciences sector. The placement, which was over-subscribed, was the Company's second round of institutional funding. The syndicate was led by Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and included Advent Venture Partners, Abingworth Bioventures, Gilde of the Netherlands and Vertex Management of Singapore. 3i Group plc and Unibio Limited of London and GIMV of Belgium, the Company's principal investors so far, also participated. The total investment amounted to approximately £31 million.

Inpharmatica is a structural bio-informatics company focused on providing and applying extensive protein structure-function information to target drug discovery. This enables researchers to competitively progress each stage of the drug discovery process. The Company is the leading informatics-driven drug discovery company which is now well placed to take further advantage of the genomic and proteomic data currently being generated.

SJ Berwin have recently acted for Advent and Abingworth in connection with a number of their other bio-technology investments and have also represented other reputable investors in the lifesciences industry including JP Morgan Partners, Schroder Ventures and Quester VCT.

The SJ Berwin team was led by corporate finance partner Perry Yam who was assisted by Sally Roberts and David Witkin.