Some 40 CEOs and board members at start-ups and companies in CataloniaBio & HealthTech met with representatives of the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Innovation Council (EIC), on 8 July, as part of the CEO Council talks.
Montserrat Vendrell, managing partner at Alta Life Sciences and member of the board of CataloniaBio & HealthTech, stated that the first set of investment data in Europe shows that this is currently a very special and record-breaking year since life sciences and healthcare businesses have already raised the same amount that they did in all of 2019: over €5B in the first half of 2020 compared to €7.7B in 2019.
“We are also seeing this effect in Catalonia, where new agreements are being announced every week, and this is good news. A few days ago, in the presentation of the study by CataloniaBio & HealthTech, Biocat and EY, we saw that investment from the 2019 rounds was €63.64M and if we add up the ones from this year, we’re almost at the same amount,” said Vendrell.
EIC Policy Officer Luis Sánchez Álvarez, presented the EIC Accelerator programme (the successor to SME Instrument), which will provide mixed investment for highly innovative start-ups starting in October. The subvention will be up to €2.5M and the capital investment up to €15M. Acceleration services will also be included. They will assess whether the start-ups have excellent teams and technology (approved in an industrial context), can create new markets and grow rapidly. “The EIC Accelerator has been designed to be flexible, agile and personalised,” said Sánchez.
Furthermore, Borja Carsi, Life Sciences Investments Officer at the EIB, said that they acquire stock in more mature firms. “We finance up to 50% of the company's investment plan with a minimum of €15M. Our average ticket is around €20M.” Over the last 5 years, the EIB has provided €3B of financing for 124 businesses. “Up until now, we have been particularly active in France and Germany. We want to get Spanish proposals,” he said.
Any CEOs who were not able to make it and are interested in viewing the video of the session and/or the presentations can send us an email at secretaria@cataloniabioht.org.
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