BioScience to lure big super – The Australian

Sarah-Jane Tasker – The Australian October 13, 2016

Jeremy Curnock-Cook, the managing director of Melbourne-based BioScience Managers, said the translation fund was an important initiative as it would attract superannuation funds to support technology development in Australia.

“Many super funds have not felt comfortable investing in things they don’t understand,” he said.

He said that if the superannuation sector backed biotechs and received benefits through returns of about 20 per cent per annum, the biotech industry would be taken seriously.

“It turns the spotlight back on to the super funds … if ever there was the right time to invest, it has to be now.”

The federal government is providing $250m to create the Biomedical Translation Fund. The plan is to create three to four new funds from that, which would then receive matched funding from the private sector.

Bioscience has been shortlisted to manage one of the funds and if successful it would look to manage a $100m-$150m fund. Mr Curnock-Cook said that could fund eight to 10 targeted investments for up to five years.

“That is enough to carry the enterprise over that chasm where in the past many companies have floundered,” he said.

He said the stated objectives of the government-backed fund matched what BioScience had been doing for the past seven years in Australia.

Mr Curnock-Cook, an ex-Rothschild bioscience fund manager, said that when the company put its first fund together in 2008 it was focused on the translation space.

“We were picking up companies that had proved out the technology but still had to prove the technology had relevance and importance in the clinic,” he said.

“We are trying to help revitalise the sector and I think the government’s initiative with the fund is exactly what is necessary, which is to encourage the institutional investors in Australia to participate again in a sector they find difficult to find investments on their own.”

The experienced fund manager said super funds and investors had not had an easy ride when making direct investments into technology companies.

“The construction of a collective investment vehicle like this, where you have government, super funds and we as managers all coming together to provide the support, gets Australian technology through to the other side to where the commercial market can be properly addressed,” he said.

BioScience has been interviewed by a panel in Canberra on its submission to manage one of the new translation funds and the government will now do due diligence before another panel interview to finalise its decision.

“With my fingers firmly crossed I hope we have a good chance of being awarded one of the slots that is anticipated,” Mr Curnock-Cook said.

He said his team believed it had learned over the past 30 years to know how to manage companies over the so-called “valley of death”.

“How do you get technology from the lab to the market … we now have an approach to it that really does crack the code,” he said. “Our results in terms of returns have been 20 per cent-plus per annum. We think that should be enough to attract serious commitment from super funds and other investors.”

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