PharmaTelevision - Paul Cheever Consulting: Funding and Investment Consultancy

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Video title: Paul Cheever Consulting: Funding and Investment Consultancy

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In this episode of PharmaTelevision News Review, Dr Fintan Walton talks to Paul Cheever, Cheever Consulting, Co-Founder.

Filmed at AusBiotech 2009, they discuss:

• Medical Research Commercialisation Fund
• Pre-seed funding for tech transfer
• How the funding works

Full video transcripts are available with PharmaTelevision Premium Content. Click here to buy a subscription or sign up for a 14 day free trial.

Medical Research Commercialisation Fund

Fintan Walton:

Hello and welcome to PharmaTelevision news review here in Melbourne, Australia. On this show I have Paul Cheever, who can be described as an architect of a number of investment schemes through the universities including UniQuest and then Medical Research Commercialization Fund which is just recently started. Welcome to the show.

Paul Cheever:

Thanks Fintan Walton.

Fintan Walton:

Paul Cheever, as I said you are a been described as an veteran investor in the Bio-Tech scene but one of the things that you"ve done here in Australia is to build up a architected put together a number of schemes that enables technology to come out of the university the one that"s been recently announced is the Medical Research Commercialization Fund, but you"ve done other types of schemes, so what's behind the fundamentals of these particular schemes?

Paul Cheever:

Sure, sure. Let me just start by a little bit of micro interest simply that, I am not a veteran investor in biotech, I am a portfolio manager so I am more of an investment consultant that, that"s has, but a better decade ago we were advising our institutional investors on investing at venture capital we began to make allocations as one does conventionally to venture funds and as we researched the industry and as we worked to those venture funds and particularly participated in the 0.01.42 Government Pre seed Program here we began to understand some of the weaknesses in what we might call the whole commercialization venture chain. And the weakness was largely around the fact that tech transfer offices at universities and medical research institutes were being given policy incentive to try and get better and do more but were largely inexperienced, so that how they motivated and being better funded but they were largely inexperienced and so commercialization from the lab bench after getting ready for venture investment was a pre ready path. We thought that we could do " we would do benefit our venture portfolio if we can improve that, so we talked about providing institutional or long-term institutional committed capital directly to collaborations involving the universities, groups of universities and institutes, so that they have a systematic process for accessing pre seed funds, we created a new set of pre seed funds on a collaborative basis working with them, one of the differences in this model versus a typical venture fund is it these funds actually aren"t owned by the managers, the investment managers have brought into manage them they are actually owned by the sponsors being institutional investors and the universities and the real institutes. And the process actually works very well because at least a huge amount of scale for the research organization in terms of their commercialization resources.

Fintan Walton:

And the key question is does it actually work?

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Paul Cheever

Consulting Co Founder

Paul Cheever has worked in the finance and investment industries for over 33 years. During the 1970s, he was involved with many of the innovative developments in Australia 's financial markets, including the development of the bill market, new underwriting techniques for semi-government authorities, the introduction of promissory notes and currency swaps and the transition to de-regulated markets for government securities. During the 1980's he held senior finance roles with two top twenty Australian listed companies. For the past 14 years Paul has had a high profile in the superannuation and investment industry, first as a Director of IPAC Securities Limited, then as Director of Consulting and Managing Director of Frank Russell Australia and followed by the establishment in 1996 of his own business, PlanPerform, a business planning and project management company. From 2000 he joined Access Economics in order to return to the investment advisory business, specializing in portfolio strategy, private equity and hedge funds. Paul was the first Chair of AIMA's Regulatory Committee and was until December 2004 Chair of ASFA's Best Practice Committee. Paul holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Washington & Lee University, a Master of Business Administration from the University of Michigan and is an Associate of the Securities Institute of Australia.

MRCF

The Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (MRCF) was established in 2007 as an innovative investment collaboration. The MRCF invests in early stage development and commercialisation opportunities emanating from Australian medical research institutes and allied research hospitals. The MRCF was founded through collaboration between Australia"s leading medical research institutes and Statewide and Westscheme Superannuation funds, with support from the State Governments of Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia. The MRCF is an evergreen fund that is managed by Brandon Capital Partners, an experienced life science fund manager.