A twenty of CEOs and board members from the companies and start-ups in CataloniaBio & HealthTech met with Susana de Antonio, director of Euronext in Spain and head of the Tech Hub Europa initiative, on 18 November, during the CEO Council talks.
“The situation we are going through this year on the markets is not affecting the healthcare and tech sectors. This is a very good time for companies to go public,” said Susana de Antonio. “What’s more, we have a special focus on start-ups and SMEs,” she added.
Euronext is the largest stock exchange in Europe, with over 1,500 companies, 500 of which are in the tech sector, and around one hundred more in the healthcare and life sciences sector and five trillion euros of aggregate market capitalisation. Euronext currently has over 500 active institutional investors, mainly in the USA and the UK, and is present in 10 countries.
Apart from the regulated market for companies that need investment of between €25 million and €30 million, there are alternatives in Euronext Access for start-ups that do not need short- or medium-term financing, and Euronext Growth for start-ups and SMEs that are looking for financing over €2.5 million.
De Antonio explained that companies that are listed on Euronext have a recurring flow of financing and other benefits such as its seal of transparency, independence and talent retention.
In Spain, the greatest success story is Celerix, which merged with the Belgian company Tigenix, which was then taken over by Takeda in 2018 for €520 million.
Companies in the healthcare and life sciences sector that want to be listed on Euronext can take part in the free TechShare training programme, which will start in January 2021.
While in Catalonia venture capital is the main source of funding in the sector, the stock market is the second and has gone from raising €4.3 million in 2012 to €24.6 million in 2019, according to the BioRegion of Catalonia Life Sciences and Healthcare Outlook 2020 edited by Biocat and CataloniaBio & HealthTech.
The CEO Council session was moderated by Montserrat Vendrell, managing partner at Alta Life Sciences and CataloniaBio & HealthTech board member. Melqui Calzado, the general secretary at CataloniaBio & HealthTech was also present.
Any CEOs who were not able to make it and are interested in viewing the video of the session and/or the presentation can send us an email at secretaria@cataloniabioht.org.
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