The pharmaceutical industry is booming from fears that arose around the world over the coronavirus pandemic. Even those companies that don’t make COVID-19 vaccines, like Roche, are looking forward to years of growth.
This is why investment funds, such as SoftBank, are very attentive to this movement. And when an opportunity arises, they buy. Yes, they buy everything that is put in front of them.
The latest news in this regard comes from Japan, where it was learned that the giant SoftBank, through its investment fund SB North Star, decided to buy shares in one of the most important pharmaceutical companies in the world: Roche.
The SB North Star movement is unusual for its background, since since its inception it has focused on technology and biotech companies in their early stages, when they were small startups.
The objective, according to Financial times, is part of a portfolio diversification strategy devised by the fund’s investment “architect”, Akshay Naheta, a former Deutsche Bank banker who now advises SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son.
Roche is not a startup, obviously. The Swiss company is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world by sales. For decades, he has focused on anticancer drugs and immune treatments, among other diseases.
The Basel-based group continues to be managed by the Hoffmann La Roche family, which owns a 50.12 percent stake.
After a long dispute, Roche acquired US biotech Genentech a decade ago for $ 48 billion. In 2014, he paid $ 8.3 billion for a share of InterMune; and in 2017, it acquired MySugr, a diabetes management app.
Roche thus joined a growing number of companies in the laboratory business expanding into application-based digital health services.
MySugr is a tracking app for mobile devices that helps people track everything related to diabetes, from their blood sugar level and necessary medications at different times of the day, to their physical activity levels.
The creators of MySugr had previously worked for Roche and had received funding from the Roche Venture Fund.
What brings Roche the closest to a startup is its strategy of R&D centers, which operate independently of Switzerland in San Francisco, United States, where the pharmaceutical company’s US business is also based.