Another fascinating fireside chat on the books!
Updated: Dec 9, 2019
Did you attend our last fireside chat?
Last Tuesday, our community gathered at Akebia Therapeutics to learn about deals and build ups in the biopharmaceutical industry.
The conversation was driven by Marina Bozilenko (Head of biotechnology and pharma at William Blair & Company). Marina interviewed Michel Dahan (Senior VP and Chief Business Officer at Akebia Therapeutics) and Philippe Lopes-Fernandes (Senior VP, Global Head of Licensing, Business Development and Alliance Management at Merck KGaA Darmstadt, Germany).
Great confrontation of the different views brought by Michael and Philippe as representatives from each side - Big Pharmas or Biotechs – and supported by lots of deal experience.
A large variety of topics have been covered, from strategy to tactics (e.g. speed of decision making and clarity of the process, (un)reasonable financial expectations; reproducibility of partners data, willingness to engage, alignment with investors etc.). Marina smartly orchestrated the exchange and pushed Philippe and Michel out of their comfort zone to extract real insights which resulted in an awesome exchange around the fireplace.
We had a blast!
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